A Long Road to Recovery

  • Photograph by William Daniels for TIME

    Ghost town Half of Minami-soma's 70,000 inhabitants have abandoned the city, most of which lies in a voluntary-evacuation zone

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    The Business of Uncertainty
    The frustration of not knowing is the subtext of a lot of what happens in Fukushima these days. In part, that's because the economic power of fuhyo — rumor — is a force that even gumption and initiative can't combat. Every day, residents read headlines that feature Fukushima, once synonymous with verdant rice paddies and mountain hot springs, as a byword for why nuclear power is bad. Reservation books at the quaint inns to which tourists have flocked for decades are empty. Though some sectors are thriving in the disaster bubble, with hotels booked up by insurance salesmen and izakaya packed with engineers repairing the grid, anyone who isn't there on business simply isn't there.

    Local fishermen and cattle farmers are forbidden to sell their products, and exports of the produce that it is legal to sell are slipping. In Iitate-mura, an evacuated farming village, roadside paddies have gone to seed. The town's shops are shuttered. On a Friday morning, the only car in the local bank's parking lot belongs to a woman who used to run a restaurant there. She says she's considering reopening once the residents are allowed to move back. "But if the soil is contaminated, the farmers can't come back," says the woman, who declined to give her name. "I won't have any customers."

    Some relief is on the way. In early August, the central government passed a law creating a fund of public money and contributions from Japan's nuclear power companies to help TEPCO pay evacuees, fishermen, farmers and business owners whose lives have been upended. After posting losses of $7.4 billion last quarter, TEPCO, Japan's largest utility, is expected to owe billions of dollars in claims from victims of the disaster. Hundreds of millions of dollars in payments have been made, but many who have lost money are complaining that their compensation is taking too long. "They say, 'We're going to pay, we're going to pay, we're going to pay,'" says Kuniei Kanno, a farmer in Koriyama who lost his annual broccoli crop because it was illegal to sell. "But they never say when."

    The lifeline of cash needs to arrive soon. People may be relocating only temporarily, but the businesses they supported are shuttering for good, and when they do, jobs will disappear, driving more residents away.

    What Comes Next
    A more permanent exodus may have already begun. After dozens of schools closed in evacuated towns, the prefectural government announced it would not be hiring any new public-school teachers for the next school year. In Minami-soma, most of which is located in a voluntary-evacuation zone, half the city's 70,000 residents have left, including 70% of its children. Their mothers went with them. Women who are pregnant are also gone, as are people with disabilities, the elderly, the infirm and anyone else who would not be able to leave town quickly if there were another explosion at the plant nearby.

    As TEPCO has regained control of its reactors, people have been trickling back. But officials worry that even after Tokyo lifts the evacuation zones, which could happen as early as September, the city may never recover. Some basic services found in most cities its size — particularly one in the world's third richest country — have already eroded. Only two of the town's hospitals are still functioning, and many of the doctors and nurses who were no longer needed moved on to find work elsewhere. If somebody has a heart attack, he or she has to get driven to a city half an hour away. On the top floor of Watanabe Hospital, a private facility that can no longer provide any major services to patients, head nurse Manabu Takano unlocks the door to an empty ICU, immaculate and stuffy with disuse. Built two years ago, it is a state-of-the-art facility. Now the hospital's administration is discussing turning it into a senior-citizens unit. "There's already a shortage of doctors in rural areas," says Norihiko Itou, a doctor from Hokkaido who is spending his vacation volunteering at Watanabe Hospital. "Getting doctors to come back will be hard."

    Still, Takano, whose nursing staff has shrunk from 80 to 30, refuses to leave. Since March, his work has become his life. After his wife and kids evacuated to Japan's west coast, he moved into a room at the hospital, where he sleeps six nights a week. He has encouraged his staff to leave the city and go where they feel safe, but he has chosen to stay and try to give the patients who still come in what care he can. When asked how long he envisions living this way, Takano shrugs. "Zutto." Forever.

    It may not take an eternity, but by any estimate, recovery is still a long way off. To get there, Fukushima will need all the help it can get, whether it's the doggedness of the nurse who refuses to budge from his post or the defiance of the scientist who volunteers for a second job protecting his city, one eggplant at a time.

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