Japan Press Weekly

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2015 September 2 - 8 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Evacuation order for radiation-hit Naraha Town lifted, but evacuees hesitant to return home

The government on September 5 lifted an evacuation order imposed on Fukushima’s Naraha Town since the 2011 meltdown accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Naraha evacuees, however, are reluctant to return to their home town which is located 20 kilometers south of the plant due to concerns over radioactive pollution and the insufficient existing social infrastructure.

Among seven Fukushima municipalities whose entire area was subject to the government’s evacuation order, Naraha is the first one to receive the cancellation of the order.

As of September 1, Naraha’s 7,368 residents have been living outside the town as evacuees. A survey conducted by the Reconstruction Agency last year showed that 46% of Naraha residents wish to go back to their home town. Of them, only 37% said that they would return to the town within one year after the end of the evacuation order. It seems that around one in ten of the town residents, mostly older people, would actually return to Naraha immediately following the order’s end.

Hayakawa Tokuo, 75, who is the main priest of Hokyoji Temple in Naraha and currently taking refuge in a nearby city, said that the end of the evacuation order does not mean that the evacuees have no problem in coming back to the town. He pointed out that radiation decontamination work is not finished except in 20-meter areas around houses and roads, and that the reconstruction of the social infrastructure is totally insufficient. Hayakawa stressed that under such conditions, the town residents have no hope of fully resuming their former lives.

Hayakawa criticizingly said that the Abe government and the operator of the crippled power station, Tokyo Electric Power Company, seek to stop paying compensation to Naraha residents on the grounds that they are being allowed to return to their homes. He expressed his intent to call on the state and TEPCO to keep providing the compensation to the victims until their livelihoods are fully restored.

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The central and town governments plan to reopen health clinics in the town in October and build a new prefectural clinic by February 2016. In response to residents’ demands, the governments will set up a shopping center consisting of a super market and a home center by March 2017 and outsource its operations to a private company.

In order to ease people’s concern over radioactive pollution, residents in the town will be provided with dosimeters. As some express anxiety over possible radiation pollution of a dammed lake which supplies water to Naraha, the town government will conduct 24/7 monitoring of its water purification plant and accept individual requests to analyze water samples.

Past related articles:
> Mayor of nuclear-disaster-hit town criticizes gov’t for ignoring reality of Fukushima [July 11, 2015]
> 2011 disaster victims call on state to keep covering all costs for reconstruction work [June 13, 2015]