By AKIRA HATANO/ Staff Writer
September 25, 2025 at 17:17 JST
Houses in “difficult-to-return” zone in Okuma, Fukushima, Prefecture, are seen swallowed up by overgrown vegetation on Sept. 6. (Takashi Togo)
FUKUSHIMA—Three Ukrainian men were arrested for livestreaming their unlawful entry into a vacant home in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture--an area still under evacuation orders due to high radiation from the 2011 nuclear disaster.
A viewer saw the livestream on the night of Sept. 23 and alerted police.
Using images from the broadcast, officers identified the location by morning and rushed to the scene, where the arrests were made on the spot.
According to Fukushima prefectural police, the men were charged with unlawful entry into a residence. All three suspects admitted to the charges, according to the Futaba Police Station.
The arrested individuals, all with no fixed addresses, are a 34-year-old man who claimed to be a company employee; a 29-year-old man who said he was a driver; and a 43-year-old man who told police he was an electrical worker.
Police said the three entered the vacant house around 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 24.
Authorities are investigating their motives, when they entered Japan, and how the trespassing occurred.
In Okuma and other “difficult-to-return zones,” homes and schools remain abandoned due to lingering radiation from the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant accident, which was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Many of these buildings have stood empty for over a decade, some untouched, others swallowed by overgrowth—silent reminders of lives uprooted by the nuclear disaster.
Yet, in recent years, there have been repeated incidents of people entering these spaces as pranks, trivializing the suffering of former residents.
Last summer, in neighboring Futaba town, a video circulated online showing a person believed to be a foreign national wearing a yellow hazmat suit and walking through a school building where backpacks and school supplies had been left behind.
The incident prompted heightened vigilance from local authorities.
U.S. livestreamer ‘Johnny Somali’ accused of trespassing
September 23, 2023
Police investigate school break-in in Fukushima evacuation zone
August 2, 2024
Entry ban to end for village in Fukushima, but few plan return
May 17, 2022
Fukushima children affected most by 3/11 triple disaster
March 12, 2024
A peek through the music industry’s curtain at the producers who harnessed social media to help their idols go global.
A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II
