When the Tokyo Olympics torch relay kicks off in Fukushima on Thursday, runners are hoping it will show the world the area is no “nuclear wasteland”, a decade after the 2011 disaster.
The pandemic might have overshadowed a Games once billed as the “Recovery Olympics” after the earthquake and tsunami catastrophe, but Fukushima torchbearers say the relay can show their home in a new light.
“From afar, Fukushima might look like a place where time has stood still,” Hanae Nojiri, a reporter with a local TV station who will take part in the relay, told AFP.
