Beyond Japan’s Fukushima exclusion zone, children don’t play outside

By Peter Ford, Staff writer, Christian Science Monitor
27 June 2011 Ichiro Monakata sits at a small table in his cramped and dusty village store and swats flies all day. Sometimes, for a change, he goes into a backroom to watch the daytime soaps on his television. “You can see nobody comes here,” he laughs ruefully. “I’m alone.” Mr. Monakata is one of the very few people still living in the bucolic countryside just outside the 12.5-mile radius exclusion zone surrounding the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where three reactors exploded after the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. But fears of radiation have spread far beyond the hills around this hamlet. The government says it is safe to live here, but with the invisible threat of radioactivity hanging over the area, hardly anybody wants to. The dead, brown stalks of last year’s rice harvest poke from untilled paddy fields that at this time of year should be vivid green with a fresh crop. In village after deserted village, shops are shuttered, homes are locked and abandoned, mailboxes are empty. Monakata says he is untroubled by the potential danger of the radiation that has leaked from the Fukushima plant to hang in the air and contaminate the soil. But few others in Fukushima prefecture are so insouciant. In the small city of Date, 35 miles from the plant, the anxiety is palpable – especially among parents of young children. “I’m afraid for my son,” says Kumiko Anzai as she finishes her weekly shopping at a local supermarket. “He’s only 2, so I don’t let him play outside. I keep the windows shut, and I don’t dry my laundry outside.” The authorities in Date have banned schoolchildren from playing outdoors and obliged them when they are in school to wear long-sleeved shirts and trousers, or tights for girls, to try to reduce their exposure to radiation in the air. […]

Beyond Japan’s Fukushima exclusion zone, shuttered shops speak to radiation doubts