For me, “Facing Fukushima†is a story of the world coming to terms with the nuclear industry. The Japanese have lived through many natural disasters and prepared for countless contingencies, yet Fukushima exceeded all parameters. In this sense, Fukushima is not just a Japanese story. The global toll it signifies is greater by far.
I have been visiting the communities and the land directly affected by radioactive contamination from the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station since the March 11, 2011 tsunami, and will continue to do so for years to come. By revealing this invisibly polluted landscape on film, I will explore how our unbridled quest to feed and grow modern economies affects those without voices or power. I believe the true horror of this tragedy can best be revealed through the quiet evidence I am gathering in towns like Minamisoma and the mountaintop farming community of Iitate-mura.
On the evening of March 15th, while Iitate-mura slept, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant burned. Exposed fuel rods in spent fuel pools sent radioactive clouds of smoke billowing above the plant. A storm front from the south formed snow squalls over the western mountains. The citizens of Iitate-mura awoke to a fresh covering of mid-March snow, nothing uncommon for this time of year, except that this snow was contaminated with radioactive isotopes, and would end the life they had lived for generations.
The seaside city of Minamisoma had been growing rapidly in the years before March 11, as city leaders developed recreational infrastructure to complement traditional light manufacturing and agricultural. In a matter of days, the Fukushima meltdown turned half their city into a ghost town, encased in the 20-kilometer evacuation zone. Now, even though the evacuation zone has shrunk, more then a third of the population has left for good.
For this project I have chosen to work with a large format view camera to slowly and deliberately record and absorb this earth-shattering event. Life is short, and it is precious. It is a byproduct of the land that this disaster has now laced with unstable electrons which will react for years, decades or eons in the air, in the milk and in the bones of all who roam and rest beneath Earth’s narrow atmosphere. In the end, we are all Facing Fukushima.