Since Thursday, Google is offering a virtual tour of an abandoned town “Namie”, near Fukushima, Japan. The town was abandoned after the nuclear disaster. The pictures were taken in March 2013.
Abandoned houses, broken windows, empty streets, and fishing boats still standing in the dock, it is now possible to walk this ghost town in the vicinity of Fukushima without being irradiated. With Google Street View images discover Namie, a city once populated with 21,000 inhabitants where nobody lives any more.
“The world moves towards the future. But the time has stopped here”, writes Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, on a blog on Google Japan . “I hope these street views will enable future generations to understand what the powerful earthquake and nuclear disaster have done to the city.”
The area near Fukushima has been evacuated because of radiation from the plant since the disaster of March 11, 2011. Earth, water, air and everything here is seriously contaminated. “It will take many more years and the help of many people to relieve us from the effect of this nuclear disaster. We will never abandon the idea of returning to our homes”, says Tamotsu Baba.