Ten years have passed since the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident of 11 March 2011. Yet whilst the impacts of these disasters continue to be felt, efforts are being made to render this invisible.<\/p>\n

Friends of the Earth Japan has conducted video interviews with evacuees, dairy farmers, fishermen and other community members in an effort to raise awareness about the ongoing impacts, through the \u201cFukushima Mieruka Project\u201d<\/a>. The videos are being released simultaneously in English, Spanish, French, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean and German.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nuclear plant took everything\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first instalment in this multilingual series is an interview with Mr Hasegawa Kenichi, a former dairy farmer from Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture. Watch the interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Hasegawa was the local leader of Maeda District of Iitate Village, where mountains of bags of contaminated waste still remain to this day. \u201cThe nuclear plant took everything. There used to be children here. When the kids were still here, we went to the hills together all the time. We picked many things, taught them all about it, it was natural. We can’t do anything like that any more. I mean, even the children are no longer here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Today we share the testimony of Ms. Kanno, about her evacuation from Fukushima.<\/strong> On 15 March 2011, three days after the nuclear power plant disaster, she evacuated together with her son and their dog in a light vehicle, having to use farm tractor gasoline: \u201cWe got on the highway and stopped at the first rest area\u2026 There was that big coffee chain there… When I started to drink the latte, the tears just wouldn’t stop flowing.\u201d<\/p>\n