The city of Kazo in Saitama Prefecture will install a monument next month on the grounds of the former Kisai High School, where residents of a Fukushima Prefecture town were evacuated after the 2011 nuclear plant accident.
The monument will be inscribed with the word "hope" in the handwriting of Suiho Watanabe, 78, a calligrapher who stayed at the school.
After the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, up to 1,400 residents of Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, evacuated to the school, which also served as the town hall. After evacuation centers were closed, many of them remained in the city, and as of Feb. 1 there were 389 people across 143 households still living there.
Watanabe evacuated with his mother, mother-in-law and wife. In November 2016, he built a house nearby. He was asked to write the calligraphy for the monument because he teaches the art at a nursery school in the city.
The monument is made of white granite, stands 2 meters high and has a double-helix design. An artist from the city was in charge of the sculpture itself and another calligrapher was in charge of the inscription describing the explanation of the shelter. The monument will face northeast, in the direction of the town of Futaba.
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