Where did the 25 people who stayed with Mizue Kanno go after leaving her home?
This is the third installment of an eight-part series looking at the fate and experiences of 25 people who evacuated to Mizue Kanno's home in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, following the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Each installment is interconnected.* * *Where did the 25 people who stayed with Mizue Kanno go after leaving her home?One of them, Misako Yatsuda, 62, is taking shelter in municipal housing in Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture.She is a distant relative of Kanno and has a house in the Onoda district in Namie. Yatsuda's house is closer to the sea, approximately 20 kilometers from Kanno's home. It lies within 10 km of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.On the afternoon of March 11, the earthquake struck while Yatsuda was at home.Early the next morning on March 12, her younger daughter rushed to Yatsuda's home from the neighboring town of Futaba where she lived with her family, telling Yatsuda that it was dangerous to stay and they should flee. At 9 a.m., they left her home. National road No. 114, which leads to the Tsushima district and Kanno's home, was already gridlocked. They got on national road No. 6 and headed north toward her oldest daughter's home in the Odaka district of Minami-Soma. There they heard about the hydrogen explosion at the No. 1 reactor and everyone set out again toward the Tsushima district of Namie.They reached Kanno's home a little past 6 p.m. when other evacuees had finished eating their dinner of rice balls.Though Yatsuda was tired from driving all day, she participated in the meeting of evacuees. It was Yatsuda who suggested that used toilet paper should be thrown away in the cardboard box next to the toilet. She proposed that rule for communal living based on her experience of traveling in Mexico.However, her relief at reaching shelter was brief. She soon heard from Kanno about the warning given by the men in white protective clothing.Her younger daughter's family of seven, which included a 1-month-old newborn, and her older daughter's family of four fled in the middle of the night. The following evening on March 13, Yatsuda also left.She had no place to go, but she headed for Koriyama, thinking that she should get as far away as possible.At Koriyama, officials were measuring the radioactivity of the people who had come seeking refuge. When the instrument was placed near Yatsuda, the needle jumped. She cried out to the person taking the reading, "Am I going to die?"That night, she slept in her car. On the morning of March 15, she was finally able to reach her 54-year-old husband by cellphone. He had been in Soma at the time of the earthquake. They met up in Aizu-Wakamatsu and made their way via Niigata Prefecture to Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, where her older sister lives, on March 22.It was a 12-day ordeal undertaken without any clear direction from either the national government or Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima No. 1 plant."The nuclear power plant is safe." They had heard that said many times before. Their whole life, which had been based on that belief, had crumbled.However, it is a fact that the residents benefited from the nuclear power plant. "We can't say that the nuclear power plant is entirely to blame," Yatsuda said with a sigh.
Yatsuda was born and raised in Namie. TEPCO began building the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant when she was a junior high school student.After graduating from high school, she moved to Tokyo to work but returned to Namie a year and a half later. From then on, her life was colored by TEPCO.She married and raised three children while running a yakitori restaurant. Her customers were workers at the nuclear plant.Later, she worked in the TEPCO company dormitory.She worked there for 10 years until summer last year. She made meals and was adored by the young employees, who affectionately called her "Yatsudacchi." Aya Sameshima from the women's soccer team Nadeshiko Japan, was among those who lived in the girls' dormitory. "They were all good girls and sweet."After she had finished raising her own children, she worked and lived in the TEPCO dormitory for managerial staff.She remembers the effort that TEPCO had put in at election time.When there was an election for a mayor or the prefectural assembly, the dormitory dining room became a waiting area for TEPCO executives. When the candidate of choice was elected, the executives would all go out to celebrate. She was struck by the sense that "the power company was firmly entwined with the political circle."Up to that point, more than half her life had involved TEPCO. In spite of that fact, there was absolutely no information forthcoming from TEPCO about the accident.Once they fled to Kasugai, there was even less information available. They had the local paper from Fukushima Prefecture sent to them by mail, and read it inside and out. What will their life be like from now on? What about compensation? They were filled with anxiety.In June, they temporarily returned to their home in Namie. Their refrigerator was overturned, just as it had been after the earthquake, and the rotting food was covered with flies.In late August, they returned once more to Fukushima to retrieve their car. Her husband drove the eight hours by expressway from Kasugai. They changed into protective clothing at the gymnasium in the town of Hirono and boarded the provided bus.When the bus stopped, two dogs wearing collars approached them. Along the way, they saw two cats lying dead on the side of the road."A single misstep, and perhaps that could have been us."After the accident, Yatsuda's family scattered. Her oldest daughter went to Koriyama and the younger daughter to Niigata.In September, she and her husband applied to live in temporary housing in Fukushima Prefecture."Fukushima has been my home for decades. I want to go home," said Yatsuda with tears in her eyes.* * *Following are URLs for previous installments:Introduction (http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ2011111516734)First installment (http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ2011111516540)Second installment (http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ2011111616820)