Dozens of villagers from a town close to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant have held a belated memorial for friends and relatives killed by Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

Mourners in protective suits lay flowers at a make-shift alter during a memorial ceremony for residents from the town of Okuma, inside the contaminated exclusion zone, near the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Sunday, July 24, 2011.

The memorial service was held in a location three to four kilometers from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Both residents and media were brought in on government-chartered buses, allowed to stay less than one hour and then screened for radioactive contamination.

The families bowed their heads in silence before a shattered public hall as a Buddhist priest chanted sutras and burned incense for the dead. Officials say the situation at the Fukushima plant is improving and has stabilized. But it remains unclear if villages like this will ever be habitable again.