Back home for just three hours, a tearful Miyoko Takeda sorted through her belongings. She left behind the kimonos she once wore as a traditional dancer, fearful they might be contaminated by radiation.
Nearly a year has passed since a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, Okuma town, but the site of the reactors at the centre of the Fukushima nuclear crisis remains off limits for residents, save for short trips to hastily abandoned homes.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant, on the coast 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.
For the about 11,000 residents of Okuma, and the nearly 80,000 people across the prefecture who have been unable to return to their homes due to high radiation, the mental scars run deep even though many of their homes are physically intact. (Reuters)
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