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On Aug. 6 we attended the 66th anniversary of the world’s first nuclear attack in Hiroshima, with Yuji Ohashi, a Fukushima City bread company owner who is committed to rebuilding Fukushima in the face of the nuclear fallout. -
The Hiroshima victims' memorial -
Obon, the August ancestors holiday, is especially poignant this year for those who lost family in the March disaster. -
We marked the occasion at a floating lantern ceremony in the ravaged port of Soma, led by fishermen unable to catch their harvest in the irradiated ocean. -
The Soma floating lantern ceremony -
Monks at the Soma floating lantern ceremony -
In Nihonmatsu, 50 km from the still-leaking Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, organic farmer Sugeno planted sunflowers instead of rice on contaminated parts of his land. Sugeno will continue cultivating, growing what he can in greenhouses and otherwise minimizing his customers' exposure. He will work to reduce his land’s contamination each year until he can eventually approach pre-meltdown levels. -
Sugeno is sheltering this goat rescued from the evacuation zone. -
Ota is the 16th president of his family's 260-year-old premium sake company, Daishichi. Their business is up 70% since the disaster, with more orders from the U.S., less from Europe. But it will be another 2 1/2 years before sake brewed from this year's rice reaches the market. -
This wild mushroom on Shinobu Mountain in Fukushima City would normally be edible, if not for the nuclear fallout.
