Photo/Illutration Mika Gorai, a singer and songwriter, in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward on Feb. 17 (The Asahi Shimbun)

Singer and songwriter Mika Gorai will release a song about her hometown, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, to mark the 11th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Gorai, 36, worked at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant when the massive quake hit on March 11, 2011.

She was doing clerical work for a TEPCO-related company on the premises of the power plant.

Her job was to document the amount of radiation detected in the plant’s workers.

Working at the power plant was typical for residents, as it was the largest employer in Namie.

Gorai said she was not aware of the scale of danger that nuclear plants posed until the disaster struck.

After the quake hit, she followed her employer’s instructions to go home. She rushed to pick up her daughter from a nursery school.

At the time, she lived with her daughter at a home about four kilometers from the plant.

Afterward, they both fled to Ota, Gunma Prefecture. She has yet to return to her hometown of Namie even after 11 years.

Creating a song helped her get pent-up feelings off her chest.

In the lyrics, she expresses sadness about being unable to return to Namie, where she was born and raised.

In the song, titled “Itsuka mata Namie no sora wo,” she sings that while she thinks the day when she can return home may never come, she will nonetheless keep hope alive that it will one day come.

Katsuhiko Yamamoto, a songwriter she met at a music event in Namie before the disaster, wrote the melody for it.

The song was shared by many on social media, and it will be formally released online on March 11 this year.

Gorai still visits Namie regularly.

The town is divided into two areas. One is still designated as a difficult-to-return zone. But that restriction has been lifted for the rest of the town.

Every time Gorai goes back to Namie, she sees that more buildings have been demolished and more lands have been cleared.

“It is really clean. Nothing is left but empty space after empty space,” she said.

She sings in the song, “I am looking for the original future, but where is it?”

Gorai said she feels that the “future that Namie had at the time of the disaster is still unfolding, while a new, reconstructed Namie has also come into existence. The two are moving simultaneously.”

In Ota, where she still lives, she has tried to prevent her daughter from learning the term "radioactivity” for a while, out of concern that her daughter would be bullied.

She said her friend’s child, also an evacuee, was bullied and stopped going to school.

She kept telling her daughter, “We cannot go back to (Namie) because there are invisible germs there.”

Her daughter, however, kept begging her to return.

When she asked why, her daughter replied, “Because it is our family’s place.”

“For my daughter,” Gorai said, “Namie was the place where she felt the presence of family because her grandparents and relatives were living nearby.”

Now, her daughter is in high school and Gorai works at a roadside station.

Gunma Prefecture is where their life is now. But Gorai said they still feel that they are living in exile.

“I have yet to decide on whether I will carry on living in this place. So, I think we are still evacuees.”

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