Thursday, May 05, 2011

In the Radiation Zone: The Children of Minamisoma City, Part 1

I have just returned from two weeks in the city of Minamisoma.

Minamisoma is in Fukushima Prefecture, the home of the damaged nuclear power plant. Not only was it devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but it is still dealing with the continued threat of radiation contamination.

When so many other foreigners have fled Japan and the radiation threat, my good friend/ cameraman/ producer Colin O'Neill flew over from the UK last month. We had decided to make a feature documentary about something to do with the events of March 11, but we still hadn't decided what our focus would be.

We initially decided that we would split our two week filming block between two locations. The first would be the city of Minamisoma.

What drew us to Minamisoma was the story of the children of the town and how they would be affected by the exposure to such abnormally high levels of radiation. Once we got there, we were so blown away by what we uncovered that we decided to abandon our original plan and to spend the entire two weeks there.

As I edit what will be our next feature documentary, I will be posting some behind the scenes footage and video diaries that will show what it was like to be staying in the zone, 20-30 km from the damaged nuclear power plant.

Here's part 1:

2 comments:

Joe said...

As a testament to you and your film making, when this clip ended I was upset because I wanted it to continue. It's fascinating and horrifying all at the same time. I look forward to seeing the finished product, but will continue to watch the behind the scenes footage.

Keep up the good work Ian and Colin.

Ian Thomas Ash said...

Joe-san, Thank you for your continued support (and great advice!).