A group of mothers in Japan founded the Mothers Radiation Lab in Iwaki City of Fukushima prefecture, Japan. The women were frustrated by the lack of accessible information about nuclear contamination after the 2011 disaster at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  They set out to better understand the impact of the nuclear fallout on their children’s bodies, the foods the families ate and the contamination levels in the playgrounds at school facilities.

Producers: Yuka Honda and Yuko Kodama (Special thanks to Fumi Tagata and Kasumi Yamashita for their help with this story)

Photo: Kaori Suzuki

Would you leave your home if you heard the nearby nuclear power plant was melting down?  How would you navigate your family’s safety and obligations to work? 7 years ago this month, on March 12^th residents of Eastern Japan, were faced with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, the day after a massive earthquake and tsunami impacted their region.

KBCS has the story on Kaori Suzuki’s first-hand account of what it was like to live just 20 miles away from the exploded nuclear plant within the first month after the disasters.  Kaori went on to co-found the Mothers Radiation Lab and Tarachine Iwaki, offering resources and health wellness services to the Iwaki community