In March, Q. Sakamaki, a globetrotting conflict photographer and former longtime East Villager, returned to his native Japan to document the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Fukushima is considered the world’s second-worst nuclear power plant accident in history, after Chernobyl in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union in 1986. The Japanese nuclear accident was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that deluged Fukushima and killed more than 15,900 people — while more than 2,500 people remain missing to this day.
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On the disaster’s fifth anniversary, Fukushima firefighters look for victims’ remains in Ukedo, in Namie, inside the evacuation zone. Photos by Q. SakamakiA man cleans a radiation-contaminated area in Odaka in Minamisoma, where the restriction on entry into the evacuation zone was supposed to be lifted this spring, but was delayed.A checkpoint on the way toward the radiation-contaminated evacuation zone in Tsushima, in Namie.Schoolgirls pass a panoramic view of Fukushima city, the capital of Fukushima Prefecture, where — although the area has been declared safe from radiation — there are major worries about population loss as people have fled to less tenuous regions.An abandoned school in Namie, where measurements of radiation levels continue to be elevated.An old woman walks in Minamisoma where the community is somehow recovering from the Fukushima disaster but depopulation, in turn, has become a major issue.A pink chair remains at an abandoned Ukedo elementary school in Namie, a still-restricted evacuation zone.Fukushima’s “frozen time” — a clock in a Ukedo elementary zone that stopped right as the tsunami was knocking out the nuclear plant.A broken computer remains just as it was five years ago at abandoned Ukedo elementary school in an evacuation zone.Radioactive waste collected in the evacuation zone at Ukedo, an area that was destroyed by the tsunami’s raging flood, as well as exposed to nuclear radiation.Seagulls take flight on the coast near the port of Namie, which remains off-limits due to radiation.
