2 schools reopen in ex-evacuation area in Fukushima Pref.

April 6, 2018

Tomioka, Fukushima Pref.- An elementary school and a junior high school reopened Friday in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, seven years after the March 2011 meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

The schools, located in an area where an evacuation order following the nuclear accident was lifted on April 1 last year, have a total student body of 17, about one pct of the level before the nuclear accident, which followed the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Before the disasters, Tomioka had two elementary schools and as many junior high schools. As of May 2010, their total number of students stood at 1,487.

After the nuclear accident, provisional schools for displaced Tomioka children were opened in Miharu, another Fukushima municipality.

The Miharu schools currently have 22 students. Other former Tomioka children attend schools in other evacuation destinations.

The reopened Tomioka schools share a fully renovated building of a local municipal junior high school. Joint class activities using teleconference equipment are planned between the reopened and provisional schools.

"I've long wanted to attend a Tomioka school. I'm looking forward to playing with my friends," said elementary school sixth-grader Momomi Kodama, 11, who returned after living in Saitama Prefecture and elsewhere as an evacuee.

"After long seven years, we reopened schools in our town at last," Tomioka Mayor Koichi Miyamoto told a ceremony. "This is a big step on our reconstruction path."

Elementary and junior high schools are set to reopen by Friday also in other former evacuation areas in the Fukushima municipalities of Namie, Kawamata, Katsurao and Iitate. Jiji Press