Nami is a ghost town. Having played host to a nuclear power plant, the town became the icon of suffering in the wake of the 2011 Japanese Tsunami, which destroyed much of Japan’s North Eastern coastline. Shortly thereafter, the nuclear power plant melted down, having sustained critical damage in the wave.

Google Street View has infiltrated the now-uninhabitable area, giving us head-high look into streets that are are fulled with rubble, blight, stranded ships and little hope.

This March 2013 image released by Google shows its camera-equipped Street View vehicle as it moves through Namie in Japan, a nuclear no-go zone where former residents have been unable to live since they fled from radioactive contamination from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant two years ago.

Koto Naganuma A 32 year old who lost her house in the tsunami said that it is “too painful” to see her home and not be able to go there anymore.

When a former resident of Namie used this technology for the first time he was hit by a swoosh of emotions.

Those of us in the older generation feel that we received this town from our forbearers, and we feel great pain that we cannot pass it down to our children,

We want this Street View imagery to become a permanent record of what happened to Namie-machi in the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

[Source: Science NBC News]