Official campaigning started Thursday for the Oct. 26 gubernatorial election in Fukushima Prefecture, with the main focus on recovery from the 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.
The six candidates who filed to succeed Gov. Yuhei Sato include Vice Gov. Masao Uchibori, 50, Yoshihiro Kumasaka, 62, a former mayor of Miyako in Iwate Prefecture, and Katsutaka Idogawa, 68, a former mayor of Futaba in Fukushima, the town which hosts Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
They all have similar pledges: reconstruction of the disaster zone and the immediate decommissioning of nuclear reactors within the prefecture.