KAMAISHI, Iwate Prefecture--Efforts to relocate elderly and other vulnerable people away from areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake are being met with anger and resistance from the devastated communities.
KAMAISHI, Iwate Prefecture--Efforts to relocate elderly and other vulnerable people away from areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake are being met with anger and resistance from the devastated communities.
Local authorities are trying to convince older people and those with young children to leave the disaster zone until temporary housing is put up.
But few are boarding the buses sent to take them to hotels in spa towns and other distant locations.
Those who do choose to leave are being bitterly criticized by some of those left behind. There are murmurings that they will no longer be welcome in their communities even if they come back.
Experts on quake reconstruction are stressing the need for officials to rethink their relocation plans and accommodate whole communities rather slicing and dicing formerly tight-knit neighborhoods.
On Saturday, a bus marked "Disaster Relief Kamaishi No. 2" arrived at the municipal gymnasium in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture.
Yaeko Miura, 70, one of a group of elderly citizens taking the bus to a spa inn in Morioka, said tearful goodbyes.
"Forgive me for leaving you all. Please come as soon as you can," Miura said, handing out disposable hand warmers to those left behind.
Miura had initially turned down the offer to take refuge at the inn for two to three months. The inn is one of 120 facilities set aside by the Iwate prefectural government for 9,500 vulnerable evacuees. She decided to go only after she realized that most of the elderly people in her neighborhood would be with her.
Nevertheless, only 19 out of the 300 people living in the Kamaishi gymnasium boarded the bus on Saturday.
"It hurts to think that I am leaving my hometown. Many people are still living in the shelter," Miura said.
Sen Sasaki, 87, said she had spent much of the last two weeks shivering because she had been put near the entrance of the center.
"I won't survive if I stay on here," she said. But she added: "I feel bad that only I am getting away."
A 38-year-old woman boarding a bus from Otsuchi High School in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, with her two children, aged 7 and 12, was in the horns of a similar dilemma. "I want to stay on in this town. In my heart, I don't want to leave. But we have no home, no work, no school," she said.
The departures have left a bitter aftertaste for some of those left behind.
"I can't just pack up and go to an 'onsen ryokan,' leaving my friends behind," said the supervisor at one shelter in Kamaishi.
Some of those leaving have said they will come back and stay at the evacuation centers when the time comes to clean up their destroyed homes.
"They abandon us, and ask that they be allowed to stay at their convenience. The nerve," the supervisor said.
Only 460 of 17,000 evacuees in Kamaishi, Otsuchi and Yamada have joined the first wave of relocations.
"Many are unable to make the move out of consideration for others and concerns about the future," said a prefectural official responsible for implementing the program at one evacuation center.
The official admitted that some residents' organizations in the shelters have been actively resisting the effort, making it clear that "those who leave are no longer welcome."
On Thursday, prefectural officials visited the Kamaishi municipal gymnasium to explain the program.
Not everybody who listened to the curt 15-minute explanation that was shouted through a bullhorn was convinced. The officials explained that all costs would be covered by the prefecture and that the stay would likely be for a few months until prefabricated temporary housing complexes could be built.
"If I were to go to Morioka, it would look like we were running away," said a 69-year-old fisherman who lives with his 89-year-old mother and wife. He said he was still considering whether to send only his wife and mother.
After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, communities were repeatedly ripped apart as residents were shunted from shelters to temporary housing and then to new homes.
"While prioritizing the elderly, children and disabled is understandable, the relocation could end up severing community ties," said Shuichi Maki, head of the Yorozu Sodanshitsu, a nonprofit organization which conducted patrols at temporary housing facilities to check on evacuees after the Hanshin quake.
Following that disaster, elderly residents were taken to prefabricated temporary housing complexes, many of which were far away from communities they were familiar with. The isolation that created was associated with a variety of problems including sudden illnesses, accidental fires, and solitary deaths.
"Once the elderly are ripped away from their communities, that breach remains after reconstruction," Maki said.
Kazuki Nakabayashi, a professor specializing in disaster reconstruction at Tokyo Metropolitan University, said that it was probably more efficient for whole communities, including the young, to be relocated together.
Junko Nakamura, head of the NPO Community Support Center Kobe, said local governments should work with social welfare experts and nonprofit organizations when planning and implementing relocations.
"It is important to create an atmosphere where people can at least choose whether they want to move or stay,"
(This article was written by Yosuke Akai, Yuki Omata and Takeo Yoshinaga.)