A year on, only brief home visits for evacuees

OKUMA, Japan - Back home for just three hours, a tearful Miyoko Takeda sorted through her belongings. She left behind the kimonos she once wore as a traditional dancer, fearful they might be contaminated by radiation.

Nearly a year has passed since a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, but the site of the reactors at the center of the Fukushima nuclear crisis remains off limits for residents, save for short trips to hastily abandoned homes.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant, on the coast 240 km northeast of Tokyo, was wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks that caused mass evacuations and widespread contamination.