Why a Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima?　An animated film with a connection to Hiroshima

Mr. Hidenobu Fukumoto (right) and Mr. Masaru Sato in Hiroshima, courtesy of Mr. Fukumoto

A scene from the animation “Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Beginning Story ‘Pass'” (Courtesy of Machi Monogatari Production Committee)

Ms. Yoko Oka (left), Ms. Kinue Ishii (center), and Ms. Hisae Yashima (courtesy of Ms. Oka)

Yoko Oka (right) and Hisae Yashima perform a picture-story show at Kariyado, Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture on December 19, 2020.

A picture book created by Hidenobu Fukumoto. The picture book, created by Hidenobu Fukumoto, is a picture story show and animation based on stories he heard from Fukushima victims.

February 27, 2022

Why was it necessary to build a nuclear power plant in Fukushima?　Mr. Hidenobu Fukumoto, 65, a Hiroshima resident who works as a picture-story show artist named Teppei Ikumasa, has created a 57-minute animation titled “Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant: The Beginning of the Story ‘Toge'” that traces the historical background of the nuclear power plant from the perspective of a disaster victim, including an unexpected connection to Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was dropped. The work asks, “What do the repeated disasters caused by radiation appeal to us? This work asks the question.
High economic growth and the ongoing debate on nuclear power

　The protagonist of the story is a man in his 60s who was forced to leave his hometown and live as an evacuee due to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. He was born in 1949 in the town of Okuma, where a nuclear power plant was later built. He entered a university in Tokyo during the period of rapid economic growth, when Japan was emerging from postwar poverty and becoming prosperous, and enjoyed his student life.

　The story, however, brings to light the major changes that are occurring in Japan with regard to nuclear power while the country is enjoying affluence.

　The story depicts U.S. President Eisenhower’s speech to the United Nations in 1953, in which he called for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, the subsequent exposition on the peaceful use of nuclear energy held in Hiroshima and other cities, the radiation exposure of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru in 1954 due to a U.S. hydrogen bomb test, and the investigation of the location of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture in 1960.

　In the scene of the A-bomb hospital in Hiroshima, a young girl asks her mother, lying in bed, to “get well and take me to the Nuclear Peace Expo. When the man, now a university student, returns home, the huge buildings of the nuclear power plant are already towering over him, and he is speechless. Then, the images travel back in time to 2011.

　At the end of the story, while living in an evacuation shelter, the man speaks. In the name of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, nuclear power plants spread in a global wave, taking in even the damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I guess there was nothing we ordinary people could do about it.
The story of the nuclear power plant in Hiroshima: the inspiration for the animation

　Mr. Fukumoto wrote the script and drew the animation based on interviews with people in Fukushima and published materials. The impetus for the production of the animation came from an unbelievable story he heard from a victim of the disaster: “I heard that there was talk of building a nuclear power plant in Hiroshima.

Mr. Fukumoto is from the city of Hiroshima…

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