TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture--Days after an evacuation order was lifted for the first time around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, students attended the entrance ceremony of an elementary school that reopened here on April 7.
TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture--Days after an evacuation order was lifted for the first time around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, students attended the entrance ceremony of an elementary school that reopened here on April 7.
In the morning, new students enrolled at Furumichi Elementary School were welcomed by warm applause and many local residents, who were waiting near the school's front gate and holding a large banner reading, “Welcome back, Miyakoji.”
The elementary school’s students have studied at a temporary campus in the central part of the city of Tamura, since the nuclear crisis triggered by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
But the central government on April 1 lifted the evacuation order for Tamura's Miyakoji district, which is located within a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, and the Tamura city government decided to hold an entrance ceremony for the first time in four years at the school.
This fiscal year, the city reopened another elementary school and a junior high school in the district as well.
Of the 151 students at Furumichi Elementary School, 91 who are not living in their original homes are expected to commute to school from where they are currently residing via school buses.
(This article was written by Takuro Negishi and Naoyuki Takahashi.)