A town is earmarking money to remove signs that extol the benefits of Nuclear Power.  That town is Futaba in Fukushima Prefecture in northern Japan, still abandoned on the fourth anniversary of the 3/11 disaster that began with a massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake, followed by a giant tsunami, and within days a triple nuclear meltdown.

“We’ve decided to remove them because they have become decrepit and are risky for people who make temporary returns to their houses,” said a Futaba town official.  The signs translate as, “Nuclear power: the energy for a bright future,” and, “Nuclear power: for development of our homeland, a prosperous future.”

More than 6,300 residents fled in the days after Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors began melting down.  Four years later, they still can’t return because of high levels of radiation, and many remain in poorly-constructed temporary homes.  They’re among the 228,863 people across Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima prefecturesstill displaced.  In Futaba’s case, it’ll be many, many years before it’s safe to return.

Signs of hope and progress across the tsunami zone are few.  Japan Rail last week opened a state of the art new train station in Onagawa, one of the hardest-hit towns.  But like many northern towns, there’s very little around it – just empty lots, many only recently cleared of the last bits of debris.  All day, broadcasters showed aerial shots of towns that are still scraped down to empty foundations, save for weeds growing through the cracks.

People braved the snowy, windy weather to visit the graves of 15,890 killed on 11 March 2011.