Nuclear Disaster Brings Tribulation to Japanese Church
As radioactive water leaks from a quake-damaged power plant off the coast of Japan, a local congregation attempts to make sense of the disaster.
Two weeks ago, the Rev. Akira Sato evacuated his flock from the Fukushima First Baptist Church, three miles away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. For the tight-knit community, abandoning the church building was a blow because American missionaries had started the church long before the nuclear plant was built in the 1960s.
“Will we ever be able to worship in our church again, or will the town simply be abandoned?” Sato asked in his March 13 diary entry. Since the journey began, Sato kept a day-to-day journal chronicling his church’s day-to-day ordeal, which he likened to the biblical account written in the Book of Exodus.
“Like the Israelites in the desert, all we can do is follow God as He leads us with pillars of fire and clouds,”...