i'm morgan radford. welcome to al jazeera america. i'm morgan radford live from new york city. here are tonight's top stories. at least 16 people were killed after an afghan suicide bomber hit a restaurant in kabul. a u.n. spokesman says four staffers were among those killed. there's been mixed reaction to president obama's change at the national security agency. on friday he ordered the spy agency to limit the collection of records and end the spying on world leaders. don't go enough to protect american privacy. the company blamed for

poisoning the water supply for hundreds of thousands freedom industry has filed for bankruptcy. water restrictions have now been lifted for most residents. as wildfires burn near los angeles, california could be facing the worse drought on record the governor has declared an emergency and residents are being asked to conserve their water. those are your headlines. up next, an "america tonight" special, fallout from fukushima. i'm morgan radford and look forward to seeing you at 1:00 a.m. eastern. i'm among the victims who were thrown by. >> translator: we were walking

on a knife's edge, wondering where the worst-case scenario would occur or not. >> it's been almost three years since the fukushima nuclear disaster and once again the stricken plant is in the news. we traveled here to japan to find out what's really happening at fukushima daiichi and to explore the fallout for those who continue to live the worst nuclear disaster since chernob chernobyl. lifelong rancher and his cattle was his life. he was buying supplies at a hardware store when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit. >> translator: there was a huge shaking. i rushed out into the parking lot of the store and there heard

reports of a three meter tsunami. i was worried about my cattle so i rushed back here. >> that's where he first heard about the trouble at the nuclear power plant just miles from his home. he lifd close enough to fukushima daiichi to see it will you binoculars. >> i saw helicopters in the air circling over fukushima daiichi. then i heard a noise, a sound like it came from a battle field. >> that sound was a hydrogen explosion caused by a melt down at fukushima daiichi's reactor 1. everyone within 20 kilometers, 12 miles from the plant was ordered to evacuate. >> translator: i could see which began on the 12th but i had 330 cows to care for, i

couldn't flee, couldn't evacuate. >> as deeply tied he was to these cattle to this fear it was a decision he feared would cost him his life. >> on the 15th of march there were explosion at reactor 2 and reactor 4. that's when i thought, i'm done for. >> explosions blanketed with esezium and other radioactive materials. after seeing other farms abandoned he simply couldn't bear to leave. >> i heard animals crying out. this is where it looked likely. wherever i looked were scenes of a living hell. i couldn't do the same thing to my own cattle. >> yoshizawa has tested positive to international exposure to the radioactive

sezium 184 and one and 187. he is receiving monitoring and those levels have dropped. >> i'm not going to get hysterical or have a mental breakdown from it. >> but fear of radiation remains strong and yoshizawa is the exception. most heeded the evacuation order and fled in waves leaving ghost towns behind. we went in the evacuation zone, remains empty, eerily silent. many expected to return once the dust settled and the waters receded. instead even long term residents

have stayed away, are afraid of what many call the invisible enemy that haunts the hundreds of square miles around fukushima daiichi. this meter is showing clearly the highest reading we have seen the whole time we have been here in japan. >> the tens of thousands who fled the towns near the stricken plant have yet to return home. these nuclear refugees are scattered throughout japan. katsanobu sakarai, the mayor, is trying to convince residents to come home. the city lost 85% of its population. >> no good comes from agonizing over the past. so i just focused on how to move the city forward into the future. >> the mayor devoted himself to making sure the city had a

future but it was a hard sell. radiation remained high in many portions of manami soma. >> we are letting evacuees know we are doing decontamination to reduce their anxieties. >> reporter: sakurai's quest to decontaminate fukushima prefecture. contaminated shrubs must be pruned, trees cut down and removed. the contaminated soil is dumped at hundreds of sites like that around fukushima prefecture. to give you a sense of the scale of the operation the bags here were taken from only 400 homes in minimasoma but the city has plans to decontaminate 20,000 in all. keep in mind, this city is one

small corner in a prefecture roughly the size of connecticut. a third of the population has yet to return here. kari saito was living in fukushima city with her husband and two young children when the government ordered everyone inside after the explosions at fukushima daiichi. how worried were you? >> translator: enough to make me raisey. i used my cell phone to search the internet for news. i kept searching. fukushima, radiation, i kept searching. it nearly drove me crazy. >> after they were allowed outside she continued worrying about the radiation. continued worrying about her children. did your husband tell you that it was safe to be in the city? >> translator: he didn't tell

me it was safe but i think he believed i was overreacting. my youngest son had blood in his urine and stool. he kept catching colds and had a cough. but when i took ethical a doctor he told me there was no link to radiation. all the doctors there said that. >> reporter: when her husband ignored her fears and refused to leave fukushima the strain was unbearable. she filed for divorce. it's a kind of marital discord so common these days the japanese have a name for it, nuclear divorce. >> translator: i felt like if i stayed with him i wouldn't be able to keep my children from harm, and that's how i got here. >> reporter: here the

matsumoto city far from fukushima, far from the consideration of radiation. >> translator: to be able to see them like this, makes me very happy. >> reporter: do you believe fukushima city will ever be a safe place to live again? >> not in my lifetime. not the same fukushima that existed before. where you could eat the food without worry, where you could drink the water from the river. that would be wonderful. some day. >> they're called nuclear gypsies, preyed pop by the japanese mafia and paid next to nothing to do some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs of the fukushima cleanup.

high school diploma >> but a failing grade can mean loosing it all... >> i don't know how my life would look, if i would get deported... >> will they make it in america? >> i have a chance... >> i learn america

the stream is uniquely interactive television. we depend on you, >> you are one of the voices of this show. >> so join the conversation and make it your own. >> the stream. on al jazeera america and join the conversation online @ajamstream. >> al jazeera america is a straight-forward news channel. >> its the most exciting thing to happen to american journalism

in decades. >> we believe in digging deep. >> its unbiased, fact-based, in-depth journalism. >> you give them the facts, dispense with the fluff and get straight to the point. >> i'm on the ground every day finding stories that matter to you. >> in new orleans... >> seattle bureau... >> washington... >> detroit... >> chicago... >> nashville... >> los angeles... >> san francisco... >> al jazeera america, take a new look at news. >> in the departments of japan's nuclear crisis when each day's news seem to predict darker days ahead, a small band of workers offered a ray of light. tepco employees faced daily

doses of radiation to bring the plant under control. they became known as the fukushima 50. >> translator: the so-called fukushima 50 was a group that stayed behind during fukushima's darkest hour in order to fight to the end. >> reporter: did you think you were going to die? >> translator: of course there were times when i thought the situation was critical. it? did you ever think of not doing it? >> translator: we felt we had a responsibility to put things right. and we felt that we were probably the only ones that could deal with the situation. >> reporter: the courage of employees like yoshizawa made them heroes in japan. tepco uses them as symbols of who they feel their company is. workers who

put themselves at great risk every day only to be fired when their radiation becomes too high. the nuclear gypsies, doing a job at low pay, to do the core of the cleanup. the tepco workers, the rest of them are contractors, subcontractors. >> reporter: tepco reliance on thousands of these workers to clean up radioactive debris and to build tanks to store the unending flood of radioactive water to keep the generators cool. >> how are they recruited? >> by the subcontractors that prefecture. there is a enormous amount of money scattered around. >> reporter: "america tonight"

found that very little of this money makes it into the workers hand. >> they make $100 a day, the lowest $60. >> a city near fukushima many laborers find lodging. many workers often contact him worried about their exposur exposures to radiation. >> there are many that have been exposed to over 50 milliseverts. >> this is where i worked. this is the floor of the work room. the boots are extremely contaminated. off the charts of the radiation monitor. >> a worker who we'll call tanaka has traveled to japan as a laborer for most of his life. tanaka didn't want to be identified for fear of retribution.

>> there are some people who work with their bare hands, they would contaminate not only themselves but would spread contaminated particles to others. >> reporter: cost cutting measures by the subcontracting company he worked for put him at further risk. >> we used to wear charcoal filters, but because of the cost cuts we got dust filters like those that you buy at a convenience store. tepco workers wear charcoal filters. >> reporter: it sounds like there are different levels of workers. >> tepco is king. >> it's unlikely he'll ever be hired at fukushima again, he has since lost his apartment and he's constantly

sick. >> what are you suffering from? >> translator: fatigue, tiredness, i get really tired. i can't say whether radiation is the cause but since used up nuclear workers don't get any compensation, i'm worried about my future. some of it could be psychological. >> while workers like tanaka suffer the high labor has been boon to one group, organized crime. >> translator: the yakusas have historical been deeply involved in the construction industry. >> reporter: helps workers exploited by the japanese mafia, or yakusa. target low skilled occupations. >> to quickly gather 4,000, 5,000 decontamination workers in fukushima you need to do it the traditional way using the yakusa. >> reporter: what do workers tell you about the conditions

that they're dealing with? >> translator: from the decontamination workers i mainly hear about money problems like not getting danger pay. >> reporter: the government promises danger pay to workers who risk exposure to radiation while cleaning up hundreds of square miles of contaminated country side. that promise is used to lure many workers to fukushima. that's what brought this worker who we'll call sato to iwaki city. >> translator: the government says it will pay $100 a day. but i initially got 20. the contractors and subcontractors took the remaining 80. >> reporter: when satoo complained he was told his contract had changed, that now hhe owed money for food and lodging. >> reporter: did the yakuza

have anything to do with your employment? >> they were a former member of the fukushima branch of a right wing group. >> reporter: but he says the japanese mafia is only a tiny part of the many companies that are getting rich of a $50 billion cleanup effort. >> translator: it is the structure that is evil. wages are skimmed all along the way and the worker at the very bottom actually doing the work sees their pay going down. >> reporter: i spoke with a tepco spokesperson in tokyo who defended the company's handling of workers. isn't this tepco's responsibility, after all these workers are working for you. >> translator: if there are labor practices occurring that violate the law, there is a legal process to remedy those situations. however, it is our responsibility to improve

the working environment inside the plant. we've made a lot of progress but we do aim for an even higher level of improvement. >> reporter: but any improvement wit will be too latr the invisible army of workers, many of whom fear they no longer have a future because of a system they feel puts profit before safety. >> when they needed people they used subcontractors to hire us. when our services are no longer needed i'm one of the victims who are thrown away. >> reporter: in the next segment we explore the nuclear raging in japan.

>> a jazeera america is the only news channel that brings you live news at the top of every hour >> here are the headlines at this hour breaking news... sports... business... weather... live news...every hour, on the hour only on al jazeera america he's been vice president for almost a year and belongs to one

the kind of stories that take a long time to cover. to have the complete editorial freedom to tell these stories

and do so with the adequate resources is amazing. sustain its economy? in our final segment we'll explore the battle that's raging over nuclear energy in japan. nato khan was prime minister when japan's nuclear nightmare first began. >> about an hour after the earthquake hit i first received the news that the fukushima power plant had lost all power and all cooling functionality. >> reporter: within days three reactors at fukushima had melted down. multiple hydrogen explosions ripped through the plant causing

khan to consider the unthinkable. >> translator: i had experts simulate a worst-case scenario showing how far the accident could spread. if conditions were to deteriorate there were 50 million people within a 250 kilometer radius of fukushima daiichi. all those people would have to evacuate. >> reporter: the country and the world held their breath as the disaster that could have turned tokyo into a ghost town was slowly brought under control. >> we were walking on a knife's edge wondering whether the worst case scenario would occur or not. >> reporter: the close call caused the prime minister to reassess everything he believed about nuclear energy. >> while you were priements in the middle of this crisis is when your view often nuclear power changed. >> translator: nearly one-third of japan would have

had to evacuate from their communities . i came to believe that we should halt further operation of nuclear energy that entailed such huge risks. we can't have another nuclear accident. i came to believe that the only way to keep that from happening is to get rid of nuclear energy itself. >> reporter: after leaving office, khan made it his mission to rid the country of nuclear energy. other ministers have since joined him. the political movement he helped build have forced all of japan's 50 reactors off line. but that success has come with a price. the sudden shock of losing nuclear power has driven up electricity prices in japan. emissions have spiked

and japan has a trade deficit for the first time in decades due to massive importation of fossil fuels. japan has mounted a drive to bring on. prime minister abe is aggressively promoting nuclear energy abroad. he has recently signed an agreement to sell reactors to the middle east. major manufacturers like hitachi are vying for a share of the trillion dollar international market and the 370 reactors that are expected to be built by 2070. >> i would think it's our responsibility to respond to

that kind of expectation. >> reporter: japanese nuclear manufacturers received $50 billion in international orders last year. new technology and reactor designs they say ensure that this time, it will be different. >> translator: we know what happened and we apply what we think is necessary countermeasures into our technology. so the technology is always improving to overcome any you know, events that happened past. >> reporter: for nato khan the current administration is learning the wrong lesson from fukushima. >> until 3-11 i felt the same about nuclear energy that priessments abe does. but i no longer feel we should be selling nuclear energy either

domestically or internationally. >> reporter: khan is confident that now is the time to transition to renewables. >> japan can supply sufficient energy without nuclear power. over half of japanese citizens are demanding that. but whether or not that voice will be crushed will be decided in the them one or two years. is is -- in the next one or two years. >> reporter: who is going to win that battle? >> i believe in the not too distant future japan will stop using nuclear power. i believe that to be true. >> whatever path japan chooses the specter of fukushima will haunt the nuclear industry for decades to come. in tokyo i'm michael oku.

ago >> ...i come around that corner... >> you don't want this? >> no, i think we should do it how we would normally... no exceptions >> should i also be in the picture? >> yeah [laughs] are you alright with that? >> no, i'm alright with that... >> ok, we're just gonna have to do it right? >> yeah