america's small north korean community. >> that's it for this edition of al jazeeraal jazeera america's international hour. i'm stephanie sy. >> i'm antonio mora. "america tonight" such next. i'll see you again in an hour. >> on "america tonight": >> in the four years since fukushima, life has not been kind to the people who fled. do you believe that fukushima city will ever be a safe place to live again? >> translator: not in my lifetime. not the same fukushima that existed before. >> we ventured into towns inside and around the seclusion zone which remain frozen in time at the moment residents fled.

>> marv and linda simkakowski lost their son last july. they were told his death away caused by an aneurysm but an autopsy found something quite different. >> thanks for joining us i'm joie chen. the ves rans administration, new scrutiny of the va and now the death of a young marine vet at a wisconsin marine hospital has uncovered other systemic flaws. it is a tragedy that christof putzel has found about how to fix the va. >> i never thought he would die no. >> marv and linda simkakowski

lost their son jason last july. he died at the at the tomah va hospital. >> i said jason i can't even understand you. so i went back to the nurse's station and i said what's wrong with him he can't even talk. she said oh we gave him some maition for themedication for the migraine. he'll be all right in a couple of hours. >> but he wasn't all right jason's death had been caused by an aneurysm butt a state autopsy revealed something very different. mixed drug toxicity. >> right here, everywhere positive trugz in his system. >> every one is a medication that the va prescribed to him.

>> all told the medical examiner found 13 different medications in jason's system. >> what was the reason that you were given about why he was prescribed so many different medications? >> he was bipolar supposedly. >> add. >> add. >> there were a list of things which we were surprised because he never had any of those symptoms before any of those diagnoses ever. it was almost like at the end they had him so drugged up he took a drug to get up in the morning and keep him going and then he had to take many drugs to knock him out at night because he couldn't sleep. it was a vicious circle. >> jason was one patient where many patients had been hyped up on unusually large number of opiates. four years of the marines ended in 2002. he got married and had a daughter and joined marv in the

family construction business building homes in stevens point wisconsin, but an addiction to pain medication, an injury from the service let him to years of service at the tomah va. >> i'm worse than before i came in. he died august 30th, on saturday. >> one witness to jason's last day, was kristin speaking outs for the first time about what she saw. >> i remember seeing him sit up in bed and he seemed like he was okay. he was mumbling, he was on a ward where people don't die. in and out ward. >> kristin knew the tomah va.

>> i took his trash out two hours later he was dead. a nurse had gone in there to check on him and just like that he was dead. >> so after he died, did you have to go back into his room? >> it was like a zoo. it was really bad. running around everywhere the nurse staff so confused, screaming, yelling i stayed out of the way. watching the whole thing though. giving him cpr blood everywhere. >> the death of jason and a subsequent report by the center for investigative reporting set off a fire storm. bob mcdonald, secretary of

veterans affairs are recontaminate ya tri behavior against employees. at the heart of many of the allegations the hospital's chief of staff psychiatrist dr. david hoolihan. >> did you ever have any interaction with dr. hoolihan? >> only after my son died, he called me actually and you know expresshis condolence he for my son jason and i think a day or two after we got the autopsy record back too he goes i'm kind of puzzled on this thing. did you by any chance give your son any extra meds? and i'm like, no, you know, here i'm fighting for a reduction in meds and he's asking me that. >> reporter: it turns out that months before jason's death the va had looked into allegation he against dr. hoolihan. the inspector general the oig.

in march of 2013, the va found that dr. hoolihan and one of his nurse practitioners had been prescribing high doses of opiates. staffer kristin saw patients every day she thought were overmedicated. >> the patients were walking around like zombies. i couldn't understand why there were so many patients that were being this their bed all day long. >> kristin said she resigned from the tomah va partly from pressure from her supervisors. >> did tomah have a reputation dispensing pills that other vas wouldn't? >> yes. >> so people knew to go to tomah if they wanted to get meds?

>> i just heard all the time that hoolihan was you know giving the stuff out all the time like candy. >> jacob referred to tomah as candy land. >> her son was also at tomah. >> he liked hoolihan he liked drugs. >> jacob had a substance abuse problem. his parents said they became even more worried about his health because they believed he was being overmedicated by dr. hoolihan. >> he was so groggy from his prescriptions that he was on, that he couldn't even keep his eyes open when we would go visit him. he would fall asleep standing up and didn't even recognize us at times. >> reporter: and so this raised some concerns? >> oh yes, very much so, i blew

a gasket basically. >> what did you do? >> called dr. hoolihan myself and talked with him. >> what was your reaction to dr. hoolihan? >> he didn't talk to me very long, short with me, basically said he was the doctor and that's how he did things. >> reporter: "america tonight" reached out to dr. hoolihan for comment. his attorney said all requests for interviewed needed to go through the tomah va but the tomah va said any decisions for interviews would have to be by the doctor himself. >> where is dr. hoolihan now? >> he has been reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation. >> where has he been reassigned to? >> nonclinical duties, not seeing patients, not administering prescriptions. >> the year before dr. hoolihan became chief of staff the number of opiate prescriptions

increased by five times. despite the fact that fewer veterans were seeking care at the facility. >> five months before jason was found dead of mixed drug toxicity the inspector general released a report saying the chief of staff here in tomah was prescribing an abnormal amount of opiates to patients. shouldn't that have been a red flag? >> we took very seriously the issues raised in the oag report, and we took actions to address the oag report including redirecting the chief of staff and a psychiatric nurse practitioner's caseload. >> but they continued to prescribe an abnormally high level of opiates. >> the patients with the highest

opiate usages at the facility to make sure we were separating their psychiatric care from their pain care. >> would you say it worked? >> i think we've seen tremendous strides on how the facility is addressing opiate usage with our veteran patients. >> just yesterday the va announced the results of the clinical review of tomah that had been ordered in january. it found unsafe practices in pain management and psychiatric care. the prescribing of high dose of opiates at two and a half times the national average and the culture of fear that promsed patient care. for the simkakoskis those findings came too late. >> did you voice your concerns to the tomah va about how much medication he was prescribed? >> yes. >> you did. >> all the time. >> was there any reduction in meds? >> i always fought for reduction in meds but seemed like i lost.

>> to honor the service and sacrifice of their son jason. >> "america tonight's" christof putzel back with us. the va has acknowledged this has happened but have they specified what they are going to do to make sure this hasn't been happening again? >> dr. hoolihan, he had desk job duties but now he is just completely out of the picture along with another wurp of his colleagues. >> so the other element of this is that it is so heartbreaking to think that a marine who is willing to sacrifice his life for his country ends up dying at a va hospital that's supposed to be helping him. >> it is true. there had been allegations against dr. hoolihan for years and there had pen one investigation before and in that finding they did decide that okay this guy should probably not be seeing patients that are taking a large amount of opiates. but then this still happened. so then it wasn't enough to basically get rid of this climate of fear that had been

contributing to this very poor patient care. >> "america tonight's" christof putzel. thanks so much. >> next, a look at last rites for death row nments. with leadal injection under fire, what options there are. and years later from fukushima, a tsunami took everything they had then a nuclear disaster threatened everything they had. "america tonight's" michael okwu on what the japanese face today. and what's hot on the web right now, what happened to those addicted moms as they grew up aljazeera.com/americatonight.

>> in our fast forward segment carrying out executions of death

row inmates. a shortage of death drugs and some excruciating executions, have raised the question of lethal injections, chris bury. >> nebraska are department of corrections, the prison's chief pharmacy tells us she was -- pharmacist tells us she was ordered to acquire it outside the united states. >> what did your boss tell you to do? >> acquire the sodium pentothol

by any means possible. even if you can get it overseas or whatever you can't use it it's not fda approved, you couldn't possibly use it for execution. >> the prison's former top pharmacist said prison authorities ignored her protests and obtained it from a broker in india who did not have any oversight from the fda. >> did they bypass your pharmacy to get it? >> absolutely. >> was that illegal? >> yes it was. >> after speaking out booker said she was fired. nebraska officials wouldn't comment on her termination. federal court rule in july, it found that sodium thiopentol had to be reviewed for safety. after that ruling nebraska supreme court effectively put a halt to pending executions. so nebraska and other states finding their foreign sources

drying up are scrambling for ways around the shortage. >> fast forward to utah directors who would allow death by firing squad only if drugs are not available. utah's governor is not has not signed off on that. last execution took place five years ago also in utah. a look ahead to another controversy, deep brain estimation. what are the risks involved in changing your mind? >> jennifer revealed an unexpected side effect of her re-wired brain. >> i'm more sexual. i'm more sexually interested. >> "america tonight's" adam may follows up six months after she had the groundbreaking procedure.

did it reverse the severe ocd? >> four years after the disaster of this japanese fishing community, any hope for its future?

>> it is a community that may never go home again. four years ago a massive

earthquake that struck japan then landed a second punch. a rogue wave, a tsunami that devastated fukushima prefecture then triggered a melt down at the nuclear plant. even now tens of thousands live in temporary shelter. fukushima today is nearly a ghost town and as "america tonight's" michael okwu traveled there, there's little hope the community will ever be able to come back. >> reporter: he is a lifelong rancher and his cattle are his life. he was buying supplies at a hardware store when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit. >> translator: there was a huge shaking. i ruched out into the prarking lot of the store and there heard reports of a three meter tsunami. i was worried about my cattle so i rushed back here.

>> reporter: that's where he first heard about the trouble at the nuclear power planned just miles from his home. he lived close enough to fukushima daiichi that he could see it from a telescope. >> i heard a sound like a battlefield. >> reporter: that sound was the from the hydrogen reactor everyone from 12 miles of the plant was ordered to evacuate. after seeing more farms abandoned, he simply could not bring himself to leave. he has tested positive for internal exposure to the radioactive elements sezium 184. >> of course i was worried being exposed to radiation isn't a good thing.

but i am not going to get hysterical or have a mental breakdown from it. >> reporter: but fear of radiation remains strong. and yoshitawa is the exception. most people heeded the government's evacuation order and fled in waves leaving ghost towns in their wake. we ventured into towns inside and around the seclusion zone which remain empty today eerie eerielyeareerilysilent. >> 2.2 microceverts per hour.

that's clearly the highest reading we have seen the whole time we've been in japan. trends have yet to return home. these nuclear refugees are scattered throughout the area, living in temporary homes like these. >> what was it that told you to get out of your house? >> about 30 minutes after the earthquake, i went down to take a look at the river. i saw the tide ruchg out to sea in advance of the tsunami so we got out of the house. >> reporter: the tsunami destroyed that house so he's been living here caring for his mother ever since. >> i live in that room over there. it's pretty cramped. i want to go home but can't because of fears of raid yaition

fromradiationfrom the nuclear accidents. >> mayor of the town is trying to convince residents to come home. >> translator: no good comes from agonizing over the past. so i just focused on how to move the city forward into the future. >> reporter: the mayor devoted himself to making sure the city had a future. but it was a hard sell. radiation remained high in many parts of manami soma. >> we have let evacuees no we are doing decontamination to reduce their worries and anxieties. >> reporter: sakurai's quest to rebuild his town has been led by a massive government effort to decontaminate fukushima

prefecture. >> imagine radiation as snow, that you cannot see. we remove all of the fallen snow. along with the dust, dirt and groo tim that sticks togrime that sticks to it. >> all of the topsoil must be scraped away and trees cut down and removed. the contaminated soil is dumped at hundreds of sites like this 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. the government has plans to decontaminate 20,000 in all. one area the prefecture rough the size of connecticut. many remain skeptical that the government's plan will actually work even yoshizawa one of the

few who made the decision to stay. what do you think of the government's decontamination efforts? >> how do you change this most contaminated area into towns where people can live? our towns have turn into chernobyl. chernobyl. and if people return what will they do? they won't return. >> kari saito was living in fukushima city with her husband and children, after the government ordered everyone inside at fukushima daiichi. >> how worried were you? >> translator: enough to make me crazy. >> reporter: after they were allowed outside she continued to worry about the contamination. did your husband tell you it was safe? >> i don't think he believed it was safe but he believed i was

overreacting. >> reporter: didn't you hear the reports that the city was essentially safe to live in? >> translator: i heard but i didn't believe it. 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 fired for divorce. it's a kind of marital discord so common these days the japanese have a name for it, nuclear divorce. >> 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 is matsumoto

city, far from fukushima far from the worried of radiation. >> reporter: was it worth splitting the city? >> i don't know if it was the right choice. i don't know. but the best thick about being here is seeing my -- thing about being here is seeing my children outside playing and laughing. to not worry and to be able to see them like this makes me very happy. >> do you believe that feuks city will be a safe place to live in? >> 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. >> michael okwu, al jazeera. >> a simple wish, and a little hope. that's "america tonight," tell us what you think at aljazeera.com/americatonight. tell us what you think and we'll

have modifier "america tonight," tomorrow. >> flap point ferguson missouri missouri. a town ruled by a mostly white city council but not for long. for the first time the people of ferguson has a chance with four blacks on the