2020 Tokyo Olympics - Japan's 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup-winning Team will kick off torch relay in Fukushima on March 26,2020

Japan's 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup-winning team will kick off the 2020 Tokyo Olympic torch relay in Fukushima, the area devastated by a tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown eight years ago.

Organisers said on Tuesday Dec 17,2019 that the Olympic flame would begin the Japan leg of its journey on March 26, starting at the J-Village sports training centre in Fukushima that housed workers battling to remove radioactive waste after the nuclear crisis

It will cross through all of Japan's 47 prefectures on its 121-day journey, taking in landmarks such as Mount Fuji and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, dedicated to the victims of the world's first atomic bombing in 1945.

The 2011 World Cup win lifted the nation only a few months after the Fukushima disaster that left 18,000 dead or missing and rendered large portions of the country's northeast uninhabitable.