MAJURO, Marshall Islands--A student displaced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster is visiting the Pacific islands victimized by U.S. nuclear bomb testing decades ago to learn what she can do to rebuild Fukushima.
MAJURO, Marshall Islands--A student displaced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster is visiting the Pacific islands victimized by U.S. nuclear bomb testing decades ago to learn what she can do to rebuild Fukushima. Keiko Takahashi evacuated her home, four kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, on March 12, 2011, a day after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered what would become the nation’s worst nuclear accident. The 21-year-old, a junior at Fukushima University, entered Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands, on Feb. 24 as people recalled the tragic consequences of a U.S. hydrogen device detonated on March 1, 1954. About 100 people, including Matashichi Oishi, a crew member of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru tuna fishing boat exposed to fallout from the blast at Bikini Atoll, prayed for a nuclear-free world at a ceremony in Majuro on March 1. “The leaders of nations that took a toll on many lives to produce nuclear weapons must reflect on what they did and compensate the victims,” the 80-year-old Oishi said. Takahashi’s home was in Okuma, a town in Fukushima Prefecture that co-hosts the crippled nuclear plant. Her high school classmates, evacuating around the nation, said they could not--and did not want to--return to Okuma. Takahashi was able to visit her home only once since she fled, but she believes that she can never abandon her hometown. She worried that local culture, as well as residents’ pride in the town, might be lost. Around that time, she met with Hiroko Aihara, 46, a freelance journalist based in Fukushima. Aihara suggested that Takahashi visit the Marshall Islands with her. Islanders who were forced to flee due to the U.S. nuclear bomb testing in the late 1940s through the late 1950s have been unable to return for decades due to the unfinished decontamination work there. The more Takahashi studied about the Pacific islands, the more she wanted to see the “scars” left by the nuclear tests as a member of a generation tasked with rehabilitating Fukushima. Some of the people Takahashi interviewed in Majuro have lost their desire to return to the islands where they used to live. But others have maintained the traditional outrigger canoes handed down on their islands. “A clue to achieving a nuclear-free world will be found when people who suffered damage join hands, share lessons and face challenges,” Takahashi said.