Kat’s Piece #7: A Tale of Two Towns

How do you reopen a nuclear exclusion zone? It's complicated.

Kat checks in on Okuma and Futaba — two towns reopening just this spring after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

"The Japanese government insists that the areas being reopened are safe. But trust in the government plummeted after the disaster. A lot of people just aren't willing to take the risk."

Kat records sound from cows on Satsuki Tani’s farm in the exclusion zone in Fukushima. Many of these cows were released and near death after the disaster on 3/11. Tani has made it her mission to rehabilitate them, using them to help manage and maintain the overgrown landscape of the otherwise abandoned rice fields around the farm. Photo Credit: Claire Harbage/NPR