Japan, a Year After the Disaster

09 March 2012

VOA correspondent Steve Herman videotaping on the perimeter of the 20km radiation exclusion zone in Fukushima prefecture, Kawauchi Japan, March 6, 2012.

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This Sunday is the first anniversary of the major earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It led to one of the worst nuclear accidents ever.

The quake struck near the east coast of Honshu, Japan's main island. It was one of the most powerful ever recorded -- a magnitude nine. A wall of water struck the land.

Twenty thousand people died, mostly from the tsunami. More than two hundred fifty thousand buildings were destroyed. Nearly four hundred thousand people were left homeless.

Some rebuilding has begun. But many people are still in temporary housing.

Three reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station suffered meltdowns. During the crisis, some government officials even considered urging people to leave Tokyo. VOA's Steve Herman reported on the disaster.

STEVE HERMAN: "I was among those near the atomic power facility on the fifteenth of March when, unknown to the public, an estimated ten million becquerels per hour of radioactive substances spewed from the three crippled reactors. For days, I and millions of people in Japan absorbed significantly higher doses of radiation than we normally would have been exposed to."