When a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan on March 11, 2011, Tokyo artist Kazuto Tatsuta (a pen name taken from the Tatsuta train station in Fukushima) wanted to help with the recovery effort. He sought work at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and in 2012 was hired at 1F, or Ichi-Efu, as the cleanup workers called it. In April 2014, he published the first of a series of three graphic novels, Ichi-Efu, depicting work and daily life at the plant, the banter and relationships among colleagues, and what he saw in the evacuated zone he drove through every morning.The collected series, Ichi-F: A Worker’s Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, will be printed for the first time in English by Kodansha Comics this month. This excerpt is taken from Chapter 2 of the series.

All artwork © The artist/Kodansha Ltd.