. >> katsunobu sakurai mayor of minamisoma is trying to convince residents to come home. >> what waslike for you before? >> before the disaster, 71,000 lived here. 1,000 died in the tsunami. when our population dropped to 10,000 there wasn't a soul in the streets. that's when i wondered what would become of us. >> reporter: yet, sakurai never once considered leaving. >> 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 parts of minamisoma. >> we are letting evacuees know we are doing much to reduce radiation. >> sakurai's quest to rebuild his town has been helped by a massive government-led effort to decontaminant fukushima prefecture. >> can you describe what these men are doing? >> imagine radiation as snow that you cannot see. we remove all of the fallen snow along with the dust, dirt and grime that sticks to it. >> to reduce the radiation, all the topsoil must be scraped away and eventually replaced