KING 5 anchor Lori Matsukawa recalled the most surprising moment on her trip to see Japan’s recovery from the 2011 Triple Disaster.
“We were near Namie town. We were going toward the coast, and our tour guide said, ‘Look out toward the ocean. Between here and the ocean used to be a town. Now it’s just flat, abandoned, bare, ground,’” she recalled on KING 5's The Sound podcast.
During her visit to check out the recovery, Matsukawa noted some villages are still closed because of radiation, while many continue to deal with psychological scars.
“That was the biggest takeaway,” she said. “The psychological change that they went through. They were coming back rededicated to family, rededicated to community, and rededicated to the earth.”