By Alex Kim

The Dislocation of People by the Fukushima Disaster

The Great East Earthquake, which occurred at 2:46 pm on March 11^th  in 2011 with a magnitude of 9.0, ultimately led to the shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant (Wikipedia). There were 15,884 dead and 2,636 missing in the three worst hit prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate.[1] But for the Fukushima survivors, many residents living near the Fukushima prefecture left their homes due to the dangerous effects of radioactivity in the surrounding areas. Even though the disaster happened several years ago, there are still many displaced Fukushima people who are unable to return to their hometowns and have to cope with difficult, unclear, and frustrating situations.

The residents of Tomioka, a town located in Futaba District in Fukushima, are still living unsettled and unfavorable lives. Tomioka counted 15,839 residents before the disaster on March 11, 2011, but afterwards, it became a ghost town with only one person, Naoto Matsumura, living in the area.[2] The government is shown to also have made the confusion and desperation of the people worse as the officials divided the 25-square-mile seaside spot into three zones: never to return, return for short periods, and in preparation to return.[3] The problem with these categories towards the evacuees is not only the fact that streets are separated randomly in these areas, where one side of the area is considered “safe” while the other side will be abandoned for thousands of years, but also that if people’s properties were located anywhere but the “never to return” zone, they won’t be paid by the government for much longer.[4] Hence, because neither the government nor TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) has clearly acknowledged their responsibilities, nor have they provided enough support to cover the damages, hundreds of the Fukushima evacuees filed a lawsuit that demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades.[5] Many of the Fukushima evacuees are struggling to receive sufficient amounts of compensation so that they can start their new lives over. The people in the category of “return for short periods” and “in preparation to return” are further automatically put in more of a perplexing situation, as they can become even more unsure and unconfident about whether they should continue to wait until their hometowns are safe to live in, or attempt to start looking for another place to resettle in Japan.

Moreover, even though shelters are available for many of the evacuees, they are temporary, uncomfortable, and unfriendly. Even though many of the former residents of Tomioka are now living 25 miles to the west in the rural town of Miharu, which currently houses about 2,000 people, they include people who have been to as many as ten shelters in three and a half years.[6] This scenario indicates that some Fukushima evacuees can’t even have a settled life in one shelter, which can be harmful and stressful to both their physical and psychological health, as they are consistently on the move without a clear goal. Furthermore, the shelters offer small, attached units, where there is little open space and certainly no land to farm, and even though “freshly painted signs on the streets point to the housing units and appear welcoming, yet those inside say they know they are ‘in the way’ and that ‘after a while you understand they don’t want you anymore.’”[7] Hence, not only are the physical conditions of the shelters shown to be unpleasant, but the evacuees are consistently feeling the pressure to leave one shelter to move to another, which can increase their stress levels and pessimism about recovering from the disaster. This cycle of living in temporary housing or shelters, especially for long periods of time, can also lead people to suffer high levels of stress due to their lack of control over their housing situation, poor living conditions, and isolation from their household’s local community and friends.[8] In fact, the evacuees’ group mayor, Matsumoto, states, “If only they had told me then, told me that we wouldn’t be able to go back, I could have taken my family and moved to Aomori (in northern Japan), and we would be together.”[9] This statement suggests the negative consequences of the government’s lack of clear and direct instructions to the evacuees, whereby even knowing what should be their next moves could give them initiatives to try and move on and build a new and hopeful life, especially with their families. Matsumoto further suggests not only that the survivors’ current lives are uncomfortable and unsettled living in the temporary houses, but also points out their frustration at having to continue to live this way for years.

In addition, living away from home can increase people’s deaths. There were over 1000 “indirect” deaths from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2012, whereby 70 percent of these deaths occurred within the first three months of evacuations. These deaths mainly occurred due to the physical and mental stress from the long stays at the shelters, the lack of medical care, and suicide.[10] The evacuees of Tomioka are living restless, unpredictable, and unstable lives in the shelters caused from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and they will continue to live this way until the government gives them clearer directions and news about the safety of their hometowns, and improve the physical and the healthful atmosphere of the shelters.

Furthermore, the Japanese government may have unnecessarily prolonged the evacuation period during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which discouraged the evacuees from returning home. The radiation levels in most of the evacuated areas are shown to have not been greater than the natural radiation levels in high background areas elsewhere in the world; there are no harmful effects recorded in these areas towards people’s health. This scenario indicates that some people are improperly put into positions by the government where they are throwing their healthy, stable, and happy lives away by living in shelters, since there are actually areas that are not contaminated with dangerous amounts of radioactivity.[11] Interestingly, although the Japanese government officially allowed a portion of the evacuees of the Miyakoji district of Tamura to return to their homes after three years, the vast majority among the 360 evacuees remained barred from going back.[12] This presents a unfortunate psychological phenomenon, where the longer the evacuees are held away from their home areas, the safer they feel staying away from them. Hence, shortening an unnecessarily long evacuation period can allow the evacuees to feel safer in returning home, before they start to feel more protected staying at shelters or choosing to live somewhere else.

In addition, some people have been dealing with the disaster through the concept of “Gaman,” which, as time goes by, is shown to be rather ineffective and unsuccessful. George Takei, a Japanese-American actor and activist, describes “Gaman” during his CNN interview: “It means to endure with fortitude, dignity, self-restraint and control. Because Japan is a very densely populated country, you have to be respectful of others and exercise self-restraint.”[13]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBswsl878k4

Moreover, when the interviewer asks him, “What is the limit of Gaman?” he answers back by saying, “Well, the alternative is to start shouting and complaining, and that is just going to make the situation worse. So it’s better to restrain yourself and if you see there might something questionable, you gather together collectively. Japan is a very collective society.”[14] However, despite the Japanese people’s strong belief and practice of “Gaman,” the Fukushima evacuees are shown to be fed up with such a concept. When the president of TEPCO, Mr. Hirose, visited the evacuation center that consisted of Fukushima residents, some evacuees expressed anger and frustration. Some were honest and brave enough to say to Mr. Hirose, “Think about what you would do if this was happening to your family. Think about this when you are trying to resolve the problem, please,” or to say more pessimistic things such as, “What’s the point, he’s too late. I wouldn’t forgive him even if he was dead,” even when he bowed to the people on the ground, a posture that demonstrates great respect in the Japanese society.[15]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBswsl878k4

The evacuees’ somewhat disrespectful manner towards the president of TEPCO emphasized that they are simply sick and tired of the way they are living and that they just want back their normal lives that they used to have before the disaster.

Additionally, in contrast to the normal behavior of fortitude and restrain, one Japanese boy exhibited the opposite behavior of “Gaman,” that signifies people’s weaknesses. He said, “Stress and boredom are our biggest problems. My father and I are both drinking a lot more than we used to, because we’ve got nothing else to do, and it relieves stress. It’s difficult to think of anything that has improved over the past three years.”[16] Their drinking habits suggest the unhealthy and helpless lifestyle evacuees have developed after the disaster, and also sadly the unproductive, hopeless, and vulnerable ways of dealing with their emotions towards the disaster, which contrasts with the qualities of “Gaman.” Moreover, not only do people drink more, but their rhythms of life, the diet, and even the accents are different, where their unfamiliarity with the new lands make them dependent on other people and volunteers.[17] They face the social pressures in the society, which include less chances of being hired for jobs and kids getting bullied as other kids think he or she may be “contaminated” with radioactivity.[18] This action implies the unfair and unethical treatment Fukushima evacuees receive, as people who are not from Fukushima exaggerate the “contagiousness” of radioactivity from other people due to their lack of knowledge and misinterpretations of radioactivity. But this can, in turn, increase their fear and discrimination against the Fukushima people, which can worsen the Fukushima people’s emotional well-being, as they are living in conditions where they need others’ support and help the most.

On the whole, the Fukushima evacuees are experiencing an unpleasant, unsettled, and unhealthy lifestyle by living in shelters. The Fukushima evacuees are not being compensated enough so that they can start new and better lives, whereby the government’s unclear directions are leading many of these people to have unsettled and unhappy lives. Living in shelters can also lead to deaths due to the mental and physical stresses caused from the long stays, the lack of medical care, and suicide. In order to alleviate the ongoing issues among the Fukushima evacuees, I believe the government should be more straightforward with the information they give to the people, so that people can at least take the initiatives to move on with their lives. TEPCO should also start taking better responsibility in covering for the damages through compensation. Because even though on the Tokyo Tower, there is a lit-up message that says, “Ganbaro Nippon,” which means “Keep it up, Japan,” emphasizing endurance, the Japanese people seem to be done with enduring the pain, and instead desperately need real and better things to come their way, in order to constructively build back their lives.[19]