Today marks one year since the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster devastated a large area of Tohoku in northern Japan.
The Japanese, with characteristic resourcefulness and hard work have made large gains in clean-up of certain areas of the non-nuclear desolation. Other areas remain overwhelmed by the amount of debris and loss. The nuclear contamination and continued leakage situation also remains highly troubling and complex.
The most reliable information in English that I have found comes from Arnie and Maggie Gunderson at Fairewinds:
Also much good information here:
The mood of the Japanese people seems largely swayed to not return to such a high dependency on nuclear power generation and only two of 54 plants have been restarted after routine maintenance shut-downs. A huge sacrifice in power use has been made by the Japanese people.
Please follow the link below to see a very tender interview with a humble farmer who has spent his life savings to buy a radiation detector to monitor his and his neighbors food supply.
The photographer Denis Rouvre has created a stunning photo essay of faces of elders affected by the calamity.
Kohei Itami, 77 ‘‘I can’t rush for things to be better. I try not to think far into the future. I take good care each day.’’