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Title: OUR FRIENDS IN FUKUSHIMA

Reference number: 12495

Date: 2013

Director: d. Yushin Toda

Production company: Japan Desk Scotland

Sound: sound

Original format: unknown

Colour: col

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 40.02 mins

Description: Japan Desk Scotland’s first documentary on the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, including interviews with a group of scientists who formed a radiation assessment team in the aftermath.

Credits: p. Fumi Nakabachi and Yushin Toda, Japan Desk Scotland
comm. w. Yushin Toda
ph. Fumi Nakabachi
ed. Hajime Kobayashi, (Colin Brierley)

Shotlist: Filmmaker's synopsis:

'Hope' - where can it be found after the Fukushima nuclear accident of 11 March 2011?

A glimpse of hope was caught among a group of Fukushima University scientists who formed a radiation assessment team voluntarily after the accident. They measured environmental radiation of Fukushima Prefecture, and made a radiation map. At the time of the accident, the university had neither a research group on nuclear issues nor facilities, and these scientists were not specialists on nuclear issues. The map revealed that air dose rates were high outside the evacuation zone, and the map is said to have played a role in changing the government’s evacuation plan.

Why and how did they make the radiation map?

Their answers to this question form the core of this documentary. Moreover, as the interviews were carried out in December 2012, 21 months after the accident, some of them had already started new research on radiation issues in their own research fields, one of which was inspired by Chernobyl’s long-term observation of environmental radioactivity. These researches are also included in this documentary, together with memories of the earthquake and tsunami by some Fukushima University students and academics and their talk on their life after the disaster.

Interviewees (in order of first appearance):
Mayuko Noda, Yoshitaka Takagai, Teruyo Kishinami, Kencho Kawatsu, Kenji Nanba, Shoko Nemoto, Yuki Nagamine, Fumiko Goto, Rumi Maruyama, Yuki Naito, and Miyuki Sasaki.