IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A high school student who thought she was only temporarily fleeing her home during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and remains an evacuee to this day, will address an event at the United Nations headquarters this month.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A high school student who thought she was only temporarily fleeing her home during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and remains an evacuee to this day, will address an event at the United Nations headquarters this month.
Ayumi Kikuchi, 16, a former resident of Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, located near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that suffered a triple meltdown, was asked by school officials to give the speech in New York City.
A nonprofit organization that deals with the issues of human rights, health and the environment contacted the prefectural Futaba High School, which now operates out of the nearby city of Iwaki. It invited a student from the prefecture to come and share their experiences of having lived through those trying events and the aftermath.
"At that time, I was a sixth-grader in my elementary school, and we were going to graduate in a few days," Kikuchi says in her speech. "My home was 4 kilometers from the plant. At that time, I didn't understand why we had to leave our home, and I thought we could come back home soon."
However, she has been forced to live in various shelters over the years, including the Saitama Super Arena and one set up at the former Kisai High School in Kazo, Saitama Prefecture.
"I wondered what's going to happen to us (at the time)," she said. She remembered watching the events unfold on the news.
"I went back to my home only once after the accident," she wrote. "There were many houses left collapsed and roads still had cracks. Nothing seemed to have changed since the disaster. However, the inside of my house was totally different from what I remembered because of animal excreta and rain leaking in."
The high school student said she hopes to one day work for the local government to help restore her town to what it once was.
Her school, which has a history of more than 90 years, will close after her class graduates. Four other relocated high schools are also scheduled to close.
"Many graduates are feeling very sorry and regretting that their old school is forced to close even though the school or the students have done nothing wrong themselves," Kikuchi says in her speech.
In her message, Kikuchi will call on people to help one another in times of disaster. She also plans to ask people to share and pass on the memories that result from such devastating events.
"I want people to know about Fukushima's situation accurately," she wrote. "People in other countries may think that Fukushima is uninhabitable and may wonder why people don't flee from Fukushima. In fact, however, it is not the entire area of Fukushima Prefecture, but only some regions that people cannot live in. Most of Fukushima is safe to live in. Also, various movements toward reconstruction have been made, and there is a lot of good news about Fukushima too."
Fumi Arimura, an English teacher at Kikuchi’s school, helped her write her 10-minute speech. Kikuchi leaves for the United States on Aug. 2.