A Japanese man who applied for a temporary truck driving job instead found himself deployed to the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, an employment official says.
The man, in his early 60s, had applied for a job as a 10-ton dump truck driver in Miyagi prefecture, north of Fukushima, which was advertised for Y12,000 ($A138) a day for 30 days, about a week after the March 11 quake.
But when he was taken to his new work location, he realised he was actually at the site of the country's radiation-leaking atomic plant, said the job centre official in the western city of Osaka.
The job centre is located in Osaka's Airin district, known as a place where day labourers gather to find work.
The man was provided a mask and protective clothing and tasked with attaching water tank hoses to pumping vehicles, part of work to supply cooling water for the plant's reactors number 5 and 6, the official told AFP.
After his initial deployment, the man "called the office and said he wasn't sure if he should continue working there, just near the reactor buildings," said Satoshi Hoshino of the Nishinari job centre.
The labourer, whose name and age were withheld for privacy reasons, was under the supervision of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co and ended up working for a full 30 days, he said.
Hishino said a subcontractor in central Gifu prefecture who hired the man had said there had been a mix up because the company had tried to gather workers for a broad variety of reconstruction tasks after the disaster.
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami knocked out reactor cooling systems at the plant, which then suffered explosions and leaked radiation into the air, ground and sea.
Kyodo News agency reported on a similar case involving another man in his 60s, who ended up working at the plant for two weeks, receiving daily wages of about Y24,000 ($A276), double the sum initially promised.
