While the government has assured visitors the designated areas in Fukushima are safe, some independent monitoring organizations, including Greenpeace Japan, have reported finding radioactive hotspots with readings that don't align with figures released by the officials. The former prime minister and fierce champion of hosting the games also reminisced how a man born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was dropped carried the Olympic flame in Tokyo's 1964 Olympics, sending a message to the world that "Japan had achieved reconstruction" following World War II. "That place, the base of operations dealing with the nuclear accident, has now been reborn into Japan's largest holy site of soccer, filled with children's smiling faces," Abe said of J-Village in a January 2020 speech. The complex served as a front-line base for first responders in the aftermath of the meltdown. In a symbolic move, the Olympic torch relay kicked off at the J-Village National Training Center, a sports complex just 12 miles south of the Dai-ichi plant. Currently, a vast majority of Fukushima is considered safe to visit - only about 143 square miles remain in designated evacuation zones, or 2.7% of the total area of Fukushima prefecture.įukushima's Azuma Baseball stadium, about 42 miles from the Dai-ichi power plant, is set to host baseball and softball competitions for the Tokyo Olympics. The Japanese government has been slowly lifting evacuation orders and "restricted areas" over the years, removing top soil and declaring new swaths of land safe for residents to return to in the lead up to the Summer Games. "It was obvious at a glance where the national government was placing its resources," he added. "I've been to Tokyo many times, and saw that there were more crane trucks at the construction site of the athletes' village than in the disaster-hit areas." "No matter how much you tout the games as a sign of recovery, the overall picture of only Tokyo prospering while the recovery of the disaster-hit areas in the Tohoku region remains undone will not change," he told the Mainichi newspaper, referring to the region that is home to Fukushima. In July 2020, Katsunobu Sakurai - who was mayor of Minamiosama, Fukushima, at the time of the catastrophe - blasted the "Recovery Olympics" branding in an interview with the one of the country's biggest newspapers. His words have drawn ire from Fukushima residents for years. MORE: What Japan's COVID-19 situation looks like on the cusp of Tokyo Olympics
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