Peace Seeds: Teens in Hiroshima Sow Seeds of Peace (Part 29)
Mar. 10, 2016
Part 29: School newspapers at three high schools in Fukushima
Japan marks the fifth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11. In Fukushima Prefecture, the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) nuclear power plant, run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, was struck by disaster and many people are still suffering from four calamities: the earthquake, the tsunami it triggered, the radiation released by the nuclear accident, and harmful rumors concerning radiation exposure.
What do high school students in Fukushima Prefecture, of the same generation as the junior writers of this newspaper, think about the past five years? Soma High School, located in the city of Soma in the Hamadori region along the Pacific coast, and Koriyama Higashi High School and Asaka High School, both located in the city of Koriyama in the Nakadori region, in the central part of Fukushima Prefecture across the Abukuma Mountains, created school newspapers featuring the earthquake between the end of February and the beginning of March. The students of the three high schools who produced the newspapers focused on “fading memories.” They interviewed residents living in temporary housing and shed light on the declining concern over the consequences of the earthquake by pointing to the results of a questionnaire given to local students. But students at Soma High School said that it was difficult to bring up the topic because some of their peers still commute to school from temporary housing.
We will continue pondering what we can do to understand current conditions there and keep these events in mind.
Tragedy of the earthquake must not be forgotten
Koriyama Higashi High School focuses on reconstruction and scars
The newspaper club at Koriyama Higashi High School, located in the city of Koriyama, publishes a four-page newspaper three times a year. This time they increased the number of pages to six to feature the fifth anniversary of the earthquake. While they were gathering information, they decided to extend their coverage of these events so they changed the layout and devoted three pages to the earthquake. Ami Ichikawa, 17, a second-year student and vice president of the club, said, “Five years is the end of one stage. I wanted everyone to properly reflect on the earthquake again.”
Ms. Ichikawa interviewed graduates who switched from Futaba High School to Koriyama Higashi High School and visited temporary housing in Koriyama to interview a radio personality of a local FM station that has covered the disaster. She also reported on current conditions in the city of Ishinomaki and the town of Onagawa, in Miyagi Prefecture, where scars from the tsunami can be seen, and wrote up these stories for the school newspaper.
The results of a survey of local students were also included in the newspaper. About half of the students who responded said that the reconstruction efforts taking place in Fukushima Prefecture were “progressing.” Terumi Tsuchiha, 17, also a second-year student and vice president of the club, analyzed the results and commented, “This is because there are still evacuation zones, and some people are sensitive to harmful rumors, even though there are buildings being reconstructed.”
Speaking with passion, Ms. Ichikawa said, “Just as memories of the atomic bombings and the war have been conveyed for 70 years, I want to continue conveying the conditions resulting from the earthquake.” (Aoi Nakagawa, 15)
Students at Asaka High School work to prevent indifference
Kotaro Yamada, 17, a second-year student and the president of the newspaper club at Asaka High School, located in the city of Koriyama, joined the club because he wanted to combat the current conditions of ignorance and indifference in the Nakadori region, where residents were unable to answer questions when asked about the earthquake. To date, the members of the club have interviewed people at Tomioka High School, in the town of Tomioka, which also runs classes in a building on the campus of Iwaki Meisei University, located in the city of Iwaki, and people in the Odaka area of the city of Minamisoma, where staying the night is still prohibited. They have also reported on conditions in Kobe, which was hit by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995. Mr. Yamada said, “I go to the Hamadori region and outside the prefecture as much as possible because I want to share information that’s unfamiliar to the people living there.”
This time, he featured results of a survey of first- and second-year students in the newspaper. About 80 percent of the respondents said that they did not worry about living in Fukushima Prefecture. The club members learned that the people of the Nakadori region had returned to the lives they were living before the earthquake occurred, though some remained fearful of the effects of radiation.
Mr. Yamada said, “We have to prevent the memories of the earthquake from fading, but we also want to sweep away the negative image of Fukushima.” He will address this dilemma by continuing to pursue interviews about the earthquake and crafting articles for the school newspaper. (Nozomi Mizoue, 16)
Students at Soma High School are reluctant to speak about the earthquake with classmates
Kirari Wadayama, 16, a first-year student in the newspaper club at Soma High School, located in the city of Soma in the Hamadori region, focused on the earthquake for this issue of the newspaper so the tragedy would not be forgotten. However, some of her classmates still live in temporary housing and she feels reluctant to talk about the earthquake with them.
Ms. Wadayama interviewed other residents now living in temporary housing in Soma. “People aren’t interested in the earthquake unless they actually suffered damage from the tsunami and had to evacuate. We can’t grasp the current situation unless we go to those locations,” she said, explaining her motivation.
As a result of the nuclear accident, fishermen in Fukushima are only able to ply their trade on a trial basis. Ms. Wadayama said that she hopes to visit Soma Port for her next assignment. She wants to gather information on what has become of the port and when people will once again be able to freely eat fish caught in the waters off Fukushima Prefecture. (Nozomi Mizoue, 16)
Students at eight high schools had to evacuate
In Fukushima Prefecture, the students of high schools within the evacuation zones near the nuclear power plant were forced to evacuate. This has affected eight high schools in the Futaba and Soma regions.
Temporary school buildings for the eight schools have been raised on the grounds of other high schools in the Nakadori region or outside the designated evacuation areas in Soma. In this way, students have been able to continue their studies. Some high schools have also rented vacant classrooms at a university located in the southern part of Fukushima Prefecture. But the number of students has dropped compared to enrollments before the earthquake. In particular, five schools in the Futaba region, where radiation levels are high, have faced difficulty in resuming classes in former school buildings and have stopped admitting students since the start of fiscal 2015. These schools now have only second- and third-year students and they will close in the spring of 2017.
Meanwhile, Futaba Future School opened in the town of Hirono, in the Futaba region, in April 2015 to serve as a substitute for these five schools. It has admitted many students from the region. (Shiho Fujii, 14)
Residents in temporary housing in Soma have been displaced
The entire town of Iitate has been designated an evacuation zone and local residents have been living as evacuees. Among them, 260 people in around 130 households are living in temporary housing units in the northern part of the city of Soma. In addition, about 30 households from Iitate have built new homes in the city of Soma or in other places and are living there. But they are sometimes shunned by the residents of these locations because the people from Iitate receive compensation payments from the Tokyo Electric Power Company. Suguru Shoji, 74, head of an association of Iitate evacuees, said, “I don’t want money. I want our village to be returned to its original state.”
The Iitate town office is scheduled to return to Iitate in June. Joji Sato, 78, whose house collapsed in the earthquake and was torn down, will begin building a new home in the village in May. Even so, his son, 48, will move into the new house but Mr. Sato will not. He says he has created local bonds over the past five years that he does not want to break.
The village is made up of 20 communities, but Mr. Sato said, “Only about three to five people in each community may return.” And even if they return, they won’t be able to easily grow vegetables or run a dairy farm because the mountainous area has not been decontaminated.
The passing of five years has separated the villagers from their former lives. (Midori Nakagawa, 15)
Considering what we can do
[Understanding the reality accurately]
It is important that we accurately understand which areas in Fukushima Prefecture have been contaminated with radiation and how rice and vegetables are inspected.
[Conveying the current conditions]
We will convey what we have learned from seeing the conditions there and hearing about them from others. We will also share the school newspapers published by high school students in Fukushima Prefecture via social networking online.
[Mutual exchange by those in Hiroshima and Fukushima]
Hiroshima experienced the atomic bombing and Fukushima has suffered as a result of the nuclear accident. Both areas have been harmed by radiation damage. Both places can surely empathize with one another and engage in sharing and mutual support. (Takeshi Iwata, 17)
Junior writers’ impressions
It was sad for me to hear some people say that they don’t want to buy produce grown in Fukushima because it might be contaminated. I can understand their concern, but it isn’t right to say that the food isn’t safe without knowing that these products go on the market after passing more rigorous inspections than any other area. It’s heartbreaking to think about the farmers being forced to throw away their food because of harmful rumors. (Shiho Fujii)
To work on this article, I traveled to Fukushima and I went into an evacuation zone, too. I was struck by all the black bags filled with dirt and branches from decontamination work that were piled up, and by the fact that some areas were enclosed by a fence to prevent people from entering. I realized that the region still faces many problems before the evacuation order can be lifted. (Aoi Nakagawa)
I had assumed that the people of Fukushima shared similar opinions. But through these interviews, I learned that there are differences in ideas on the nuclear plant, even within the same prefecture, between the people on the mountain side and the people on the ocean side. Because people’s opinions of the same problem can be very different based on the geographical conditions in other prefectures and nations, too, I want to take this issue into consideration when I reflect on these situations. (Takeshi Iwata)
I went to Fukushima to interview the people there and stayed two days. On the first day, I visited Koriyama Higashi High School and Asaka High School. What I felt on the first day was the connection between Hiroshima and Fukushima. The amount of information about radiation has grown, but people’s attitudes, even prejudice, toward those who were exposed to radiation haven’t changed. I heard stories like a man who was driving a car that had a Fukushima license plate, and the drivers ahead of him and behind him on the highway put an unusually large gap between their cars and his. Another man began working in Tokyo and when he was asked where he was from and mentioned Fukushima, his boss told him that he smelled like radiation. Years ago, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, adolescent girls wondered if they would be able to marry. Like the discrimination suffered by A-bomb survivors 70 years ago, I felt a similar kind of discrimination toward the people of Fukushima. Mr. Yamada, the head of the newspaper club at Asaka High School, told me, “The tangible side of things, like infrastructure, has been reconstructed, but people’s minds, the intangible side of things, have not yet recovered.” I agreed with his words.
On the second day, I visited a temporary housing site and interviewed Ms. Wadayama of the publishing club of Soma High School. There were many things that I was able to understand after I took a firsthand trip to the Hamadori region. What struck me most was the lingering scars of five years ago. When the teacher who supervised the publishing club took us to a restaurant in the neighborhood for lunch, on the menu there was a bowl of rice with seafood on top. Before the earthquake, these bowls of rice came with various kinds of local fish and seafood. But now, because fishing off the Fukushima coast is forbidden, the rice is topped only with octopus and young sardine that are caught in the sea of Fukushima. I was shocked to unexpectedly find scars of the earthquake right there in a local restaurant. (Nozomi Mizoue)
What is Peace Seeds?
Peace Seeds are the seeds of smiles which can be spread around the world by thinking about peace and the preciousness of life from various viewpoints. To fill this world with flowering smiles, 45 junior writers, from the sixth grade of elementary school to the fifth year of high school, choose themes, gather information, and write articles.
(Published on March 10, 2016)
Japan marks the fifth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11. In Fukushima Prefecture, the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) nuclear power plant, run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, was struck by disaster and many people are still suffering from four calamities: the earthquake, the tsunami it triggered, the radiation released by the nuclear accident, and harmful rumors concerning radiation exposure.
What do high school students in Fukushima Prefecture, of the same generation as the junior writers of this newspaper, think about the past five years? Soma High School, located in the city of Soma in the Hamadori region along the Pacific coast, and Koriyama Higashi High School and Asaka High School, both located in the city of Koriyama in the Nakadori region, in the central part of Fukushima Prefecture across the Abukuma Mountains, created school newspapers featuring the earthquake between the end of February and the beginning of March. The students of the three high schools who produced the newspapers focused on “fading memories.” They interviewed residents living in temporary housing and shed light on the declining concern over the consequences of the earthquake by pointing to the results of a questionnaire given to local students. But students at Soma High School said that it was difficult to bring up the topic because some of their peers still commute to school from temporary housing.
We will continue pondering what we can do to understand current conditions there and keep these events in mind.
Tragedy of the earthquake must not be forgotten
Koriyama Higashi High School focuses on reconstruction and scars
The newspaper club at Koriyama Higashi High School, located in the city of Koriyama, publishes a four-page newspaper three times a year. This time they increased the number of pages to six to feature the fifth anniversary of the earthquake. While they were gathering information, they decided to extend their coverage of these events so they changed the layout and devoted three pages to the earthquake. Ami Ichikawa, 17, a second-year student and vice president of the club, said, “Five years is the end of one stage. I wanted everyone to properly reflect on the earthquake again.”
Ms. Ichikawa interviewed graduates who switched from Futaba High School to Koriyama Higashi High School and visited temporary housing in Koriyama to interview a radio personality of a local FM station that has covered the disaster. She also reported on current conditions in the city of Ishinomaki and the town of Onagawa, in Miyagi Prefecture, where scars from the tsunami can be seen, and wrote up these stories for the school newspaper.
The results of a survey of local students were also included in the newspaper. About half of the students who responded said that the reconstruction efforts taking place in Fukushima Prefecture were “progressing.” Terumi Tsuchiha, 17, also a second-year student and vice president of the club, analyzed the results and commented, “This is because there are still evacuation zones, and some people are sensitive to harmful rumors, even though there are buildings being reconstructed.”
Speaking with passion, Ms. Ichikawa said, “Just as memories of the atomic bombings and the war have been conveyed for 70 years, I want to continue conveying the conditions resulting from the earthquake.” (Aoi Nakagawa, 15)
Students at Asaka High School work to prevent indifference
Kotaro Yamada, 17, a second-year student and the president of the newspaper club at Asaka High School, located in the city of Koriyama, joined the club because he wanted to combat the current conditions of ignorance and indifference in the Nakadori region, where residents were unable to answer questions when asked about the earthquake. To date, the members of the club have interviewed people at Tomioka High School, in the town of Tomioka, which also runs classes in a building on the campus of Iwaki Meisei University, located in the city of Iwaki, and people in the Odaka area of the city of Minamisoma, where staying the night is still prohibited. They have also reported on conditions in Kobe, which was hit by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995. Mr. Yamada said, “I go to the Hamadori region and outside the prefecture as much as possible because I want to share information that’s unfamiliar to the people living there.”
This time, he featured results of a survey of first- and second-year students in the newspaper. About 80 percent of the respondents said that they did not worry about living in Fukushima Prefecture. The club members learned that the people of the Nakadori region had returned to the lives they were living before the earthquake occurred, though some remained fearful of the effects of radiation.
Mr. Yamada said, “We have to prevent the memories of the earthquake from fading, but we also want to sweep away the negative image of Fukushima.” He will address this dilemma by continuing to pursue interviews about the earthquake and crafting articles for the school newspaper. (Nozomi Mizoue, 16)
Students at Soma High School are reluctant to speak about the earthquake with classmates
Kirari Wadayama, 16, a first-year student in the newspaper club at Soma High School, located in the city of Soma in the Hamadori region, focused on the earthquake for this issue of the newspaper so the tragedy would not be forgotten. However, some of her classmates still live in temporary housing and she feels reluctant to talk about the earthquake with them.
Ms. Wadayama interviewed other residents now living in temporary housing in Soma. “People aren’t interested in the earthquake unless they actually suffered damage from the tsunami and had to evacuate. We can’t grasp the current situation unless we go to those locations,” she said, explaining her motivation.
As a result of the nuclear accident, fishermen in Fukushima are only able to ply their trade on a trial basis. Ms. Wadayama said that she hopes to visit Soma Port for her next assignment. She wants to gather information on what has become of the port and when people will once again be able to freely eat fish caught in the waters off Fukushima Prefecture. (Nozomi Mizoue, 16)
Students at eight high schools had to evacuate
In Fukushima Prefecture, the students of high schools within the evacuation zones near the nuclear power plant were forced to evacuate. This has affected eight high schools in the Futaba and Soma regions.
Temporary school buildings for the eight schools have been raised on the grounds of other high schools in the Nakadori region or outside the designated evacuation areas in Soma. In this way, students have been able to continue their studies. Some high schools have also rented vacant classrooms at a university located in the southern part of Fukushima Prefecture. But the number of students has dropped compared to enrollments before the earthquake. In particular, five schools in the Futaba region, where radiation levels are high, have faced difficulty in resuming classes in former school buildings and have stopped admitting students since the start of fiscal 2015. These schools now have only second- and third-year students and they will close in the spring of 2017.
Meanwhile, Futaba Future School opened in the town of Hirono, in the Futaba region, in April 2015 to serve as a substitute for these five schools. It has admitted many students from the region. (Shiho Fujii, 14)
Residents in temporary housing in Soma have been displaced
The entire town of Iitate has been designated an evacuation zone and local residents have been living as evacuees. Among them, 260 people in around 130 households are living in temporary housing units in the northern part of the city of Soma. In addition, about 30 households from Iitate have built new homes in the city of Soma or in other places and are living there. But they are sometimes shunned by the residents of these locations because the people from Iitate receive compensation payments from the Tokyo Electric Power Company. Suguru Shoji, 74, head of an association of Iitate evacuees, said, “I don’t want money. I want our village to be returned to its original state.”
The Iitate town office is scheduled to return to Iitate in June. Joji Sato, 78, whose house collapsed in the earthquake and was torn down, will begin building a new home in the village in May. Even so, his son, 48, will move into the new house but Mr. Sato will not. He says he has created local bonds over the past five years that he does not want to break.
The village is made up of 20 communities, but Mr. Sato said, “Only about three to five people in each community may return.” And even if they return, they won’t be able to easily grow vegetables or run a dairy farm because the mountainous area has not been decontaminated.
The passing of five years has separated the villagers from their former lives. (Midori Nakagawa, 15)
Considering what we can do
[Understanding the reality accurately]
It is important that we accurately understand which areas in Fukushima Prefecture have been contaminated with radiation and how rice and vegetables are inspected.
[Conveying the current conditions]
We will convey what we have learned from seeing the conditions there and hearing about them from others. We will also share the school newspapers published by high school students in Fukushima Prefecture via social networking online.
[Mutual exchange by those in Hiroshima and Fukushima]
Hiroshima experienced the atomic bombing and Fukushima has suffered as a result of the nuclear accident. Both areas have been harmed by radiation damage. Both places can surely empathize with one another and engage in sharing and mutual support. (Takeshi Iwata, 17)
Junior writers’ impressions
It was sad for me to hear some people say that they don’t want to buy produce grown in Fukushima because it might be contaminated. I can understand their concern, but it isn’t right to say that the food isn’t safe without knowing that these products go on the market after passing more rigorous inspections than any other area. It’s heartbreaking to think about the farmers being forced to throw away their food because of harmful rumors. (Shiho Fujii)
To work on this article, I traveled to Fukushima and I went into an evacuation zone, too. I was struck by all the black bags filled with dirt and branches from decontamination work that were piled up, and by the fact that some areas were enclosed by a fence to prevent people from entering. I realized that the region still faces many problems before the evacuation order can be lifted. (Aoi Nakagawa)
I had assumed that the people of Fukushima shared similar opinions. But through these interviews, I learned that there are differences in ideas on the nuclear plant, even within the same prefecture, between the people on the mountain side and the people on the ocean side. Because people’s opinions of the same problem can be very different based on the geographical conditions in other prefectures and nations, too, I want to take this issue into consideration when I reflect on these situations. (Takeshi Iwata)
I went to Fukushima to interview the people there and stayed two days. On the first day, I visited Koriyama Higashi High School and Asaka High School. What I felt on the first day was the connection between Hiroshima and Fukushima. The amount of information about radiation has grown, but people’s attitudes, even prejudice, toward those who were exposed to radiation haven’t changed. I heard stories like a man who was driving a car that had a Fukushima license plate, and the drivers ahead of him and behind him on the highway put an unusually large gap between their cars and his. Another man began working in Tokyo and when he was asked where he was from and mentioned Fukushima, his boss told him that he smelled like radiation. Years ago, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, adolescent girls wondered if they would be able to marry. Like the discrimination suffered by A-bomb survivors 70 years ago, I felt a similar kind of discrimination toward the people of Fukushima. Mr. Yamada, the head of the newspaper club at Asaka High School, told me, “The tangible side of things, like infrastructure, has been reconstructed, but people’s minds, the intangible side of things, have not yet recovered.” I agreed with his words.
On the second day, I visited a temporary housing site and interviewed Ms. Wadayama of the publishing club of Soma High School. There were many things that I was able to understand after I took a firsthand trip to the Hamadori region. What struck me most was the lingering scars of five years ago. When the teacher who supervised the publishing club took us to a restaurant in the neighborhood for lunch, on the menu there was a bowl of rice with seafood on top. Before the earthquake, these bowls of rice came with various kinds of local fish and seafood. But now, because fishing off the Fukushima coast is forbidden, the rice is topped only with octopus and young sardine that are caught in the sea of Fukushima. I was shocked to unexpectedly find scars of the earthquake right there in a local restaurant. (Nozomi Mizoue)
What is Peace Seeds?
Peace Seeds are the seeds of smiles which can be spread around the world by thinking about peace and the preciousness of life from various viewpoints. To fill this world with flowering smiles, 45 junior writers, from the sixth grade of elementary school to the fifth year of high school, choose themes, gather information, and write articles.
(Published on March 10, 2016)
