JAPAN

Disaster-hit school sees off first grads in three years

Mitsuhide Yoshida receives his graduation certificate during the commencement ceremony at Katsurao Junior High School in Miharu, Fukushima Prefecture, on Thursday. His fellow graduate, Daisuke Sato, is seated in the front row, third from the left. | KYODO

Kyodo

Mar 13, 2014

FUKUSHIMA –

A junior high school formerly in the evacuated village of Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, held its first commencement ceremony Thursday since the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis began unfolding in March 2011.

Two students — Mitsuhide Yoshida and Daisuke Sato, both 15 — graduated from Katsurao Junior High School, the only junior high serving the village.

Four other students attend the school.

The school resumed classes last April 1 after moving into the buildings of a shuttered school in the town of Miharu. Katsurao was designated a nuclear evacuation zone, which forced all its residents to evacuate.

At the commencement ceremony, Principal Shinichi Haryu handed graduation certificates to Yoshida and Sato and said he was proud to send them off as the reborn school's first graduates.