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Title: EVACUATION ORDER IN FUKUSHIMA: July 2017

Reference number: 13701

Date: 2018

Director: d. Yushin Toda

Production company: Japan Desk Scotland

Sound: sound

Original format: unknown

Colour: col

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 66.51 mins

Description: Japan Desk Scotland’s sixth documentary about the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, looking at the ongoing programme of decontamination and international collaboration with Ukraine, Russia and Bangladesh.

Credits: p. Fumi Nakabachi and Yushin Toda, Japan Desk Scotland
comm. w. Yushin Toda
ph. Fumi Nakabachi
ed. Yushin Toda
m. Mark Twain in Japan by INVACUO

Shotlist: Filmmaker's Synopsis:

This is Japan Desk Scotland’s sixth Fukushima documentary, based on the interviews carried out in July 2017.

Kencho Kawatsu, Fukushima University, takes Japan Desk Scotland to Tomioka Town near the troubled nuclear plant. Ryo Sugimoto of Tomioka Town Office guides them to various places in the town. While showing the place used as an evacuation centre on the day of the earthquake, he suddenly talks about his experience of being engulfed by the tsunami.

After the nuclear accident, the whole area of Tomioka Town was made evacuation zone, but in April 2017 the evacuation order was partially lifted following the decontamination work. Sugimoto shows the area where the order was lifted, with a bank and a post office reopened, a rail station reconstructed, and a hospital and hotels being constructed. He also takes them inside the ‘Difficult-to-Return’ zone still under the evacuation order.

Insider the ‘Difficult-to-Return’ zone there was huge Temporary Storage facilities for the radioactive topsoil removed as part of decontamination. It is estimated to be 20 million cubic meters across Fukushima Prefecture. The soil is to be transported from Temporary Storages at various places to Interim Storage, which is under construction, to be stored for 30 years. Then it will be moved to Final Disposal Site, which is to be found outside Fukushima Prefecture. Seiji Ozawa of the Ministry of the Environment talks about challenges associated with this whole operation.

Fukushima University’s Institute of Environmental Radioactivity has two directions, argues its Director, Kenji Nanba: international and local. By international, he means making IER a world-wide reservoir of knowledge, experience and experts on nuclear accidents at one place, making it useful for future nuclear accidents. By local, he means making sure that the countermeasures for the Fukushima accident are useful by having a regular feedback meeting with local residents. His views are widely shared by scholars at IER from Ukraine, Russia and Bangladesh.

Interviews are also carried out with Fukushima University students, graduates and staff, as well as graduate students from Colorado State University doing research at IER.

Interviewees (in order of their first appearances):
Kencho Kawatsu, a staff member at ‘Commutan Fukushima’, Ryo Sugimoto, Seiji Ozawa, Daichi Ito, Vasyl Yoschenko, Daniel Workman, Alexei Konoplev, Md. Mofizur Rahman, Zinnat Ara Begum, Kenji Nanba, Mark Zheleznyak, Amber Harshman, Mayuko Noda, Akira Sato, Miyuki Sasaki, Fumiko Goto, Yuki Takimoto, Jyoichiro Usuki, Yuki Inoue, and Makoto Matsueda