On March 11th, 2011, Japan was shaken to its core by an undersea megathrust earthquake. It was the fourth most powerful earthquake on earth since 1900, when modern record-keeping started. Soon after, a series of tsunami waves slammed the coastline. Thousands of people were killed, cities were destroyed, and perhaps most terrifying, the cooling system at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant failed. Interestingly, the plant survived the earthquake but was undone by the power of the waves that followed. It was a level-7 nuclear meltdown, and the world went into panic mode.
Nearly 150,000 people were evacuated from a 20-kilometer radius of the plant. The area was sealed off, and those people did not return to their homes for five years. In 2016, after a herculean effort to wash the area of its radiation, the government allowed a few of them to return home—although it was entirely different. Now, the no-entry zone around the nuclear plant makes up less than 3 percent of its area and residents are slowly filtering back to their residences.
Even now, years later, Fukushima has become synonymous with radiation. Despite assurances from Japanese authorities that it is indeed almost back to normal, the general sentiment seems to be one of skepticism. When surfing was announced as an Olympic sport and would be held in Chiba nearly a decade after the disaster and 200 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, many were worried. Surfers in the area, however, don’t seem to be. The Olympic Channel follows one dedicated surfer, whose life was forever changed, and his struggle to return to what once was. “The first people who came back here were surfers,” he says. “It’s very difficult to bring it back to what it once was, but by living here, I believe it would make this once again a happy island.”
