Practice Article What we can learn about recovery: Lessons from the Fukushima survivors Mayuko Tone and Teresa Stone, PhD Graduate School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, Ube, Japan Abstract Recovery from disaster can take a lifetime, and people looking in from outside might not appreciate the stages of recovery. Little talked about is the stigma, which might attach to the survivors of a disaster, especially if it is a man-made disaster.This paper documents the account of a Japanese nursing student who visited the area 18 months after the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, talked to the people there, and shared her reflections.The experiences of the Fukushima survivors are linked to those of victims of other disasters, whose recovery was impeded by being discriminated against and stigmatized. Key words disaster, Japan, mental health, nuclear accident, radiation, recovery, stigma. INTRODUCTION This is an account by Ms Mayuko Tone, a third year nursing student from Yamaguchi University.Yamaguchi is a prefec- ture in the south west of Japan, well away from the danger of the great earthquake of 2011, but the repercussions and emotions of the tragedy have affected everyone in Japan. As the world recovers from more recent disasters and braces itself for the inevitable next one, the situation in Fukushima remains a tragedy for those from the affected area who want to get on with their lives. At least 15,883 people were confirmed dead at the time of the disaster, but 2654 still remain unaccounted for; more than 215,000 people are still living away from home; and decommissioning of the plant is expected to take 40 years (Corbett, 2013a; McCurry, 2013). The decontamination of the six towns around the nuclear plant had been expected to be completed by early 2014, but the environment minister recently announced that it will be delayed by up to three years (Corbett, 2013b) Barely a day goes by without bad news in the media: reports about radio- active leakage contaminating fish stocks, ground under the stricken plant sinking, plummeting morale in the workers tasked to clean up the plant, radiation levels as high as in 2011, and strong suspicions that the government are cover- ing up the extent of the continuing disaster (McCurry, 2013). MAYUKO’S ACCOUNT Mayuko wanted to understand the situation before she started out in practice as a nurse, so she decided to use her holiday to go on a tour of the affected area and talk to the people. This is her account: I visited Fukushima Prefecture in the summer of 2013. Fukushima contended with the damage from the earth- quake, the tsunami, and the nuclear accident on March 11, 2011. The damage was very extensive and the images are familiar to all of us from the television and papers. We saw a powerful, muddy wall of water swallow houses, cars and towns, and change the landscape in minutes.The nuclear plant collapsed, and I felt the “blind terror of radiation”. It is something that is dangerous but com- pletely invisible. Although I lived in Japan, I had not experienced this at first hand and felt that I did not understand it. Even though these were our neighbors, our friends, we still felt that they were remote from us (Fig. 1). Two and a half years have passed since the disaster, and I still have no understanding of the stricken area and the prob- lems faced by those who live there. When I review the images of the earthquake and tsunami, I remember the immense damage. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident dis- asters came together and changed everything. In that situa- tion, seeing those people who are sad, helpless, and lose all their hope, I thought their sadness and suffering were immeasurably huge (Fig. 2). When I visited Fukushima, most of the mountains of rubble, which told of the physical misery of a disaster, no longer remained. Many challenging tasks still lie ahead; for example, radioactive decontamination work and restoration Correspondence address: Teresa Stone, Faculty of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine,Yamaguchi University, Ube 755-8505, Japan. Email: teriston@ yamaguchi-u.ac.jp Received 19 November 2013; accepted 24 November 2013 Nursing and Health Sciences (2014), 16, 52–55 © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. doi: 10.1111/nhs.12117