A Peach from Fukushima

On March 12, 2011, one day after the Great East Japan earthquake, I stood in a line behind tens

and in front of hundreds

to enter a supermarket in Tokyo.

At precisely 9 a.m., the automatic doors were manually opened by a single cashier, and everyone in line rushed forward to enter the soon-to-be-barren store.

Inside, my brother and I – sixteen and eleven, respectively – were split up, and I ran upstairs to snatch the last bag of rice in the store.

It was 9:01.

My brother grabbed canned goods fresh produce from all over Japan.

Par my father’s advice, my family decided not to consume any goods from the Northeast for thirty years, when the radioactivity levels in northeastern Japan would, by the law of radioactive decay, decrease to half its current toxic level.

The next year, and every year after that, I walked in the same supermarket, my fellow shoppers buying peaches from Fukushima,

large

and

surely delicious.