An evacuee from Fukushima Prefecture told the Upper House Special Committee on Reconstruction how difficult life has become for her, and others like her, who have been displaced by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
An evacuee from Fukushima Prefecture told the Upper House Special Committee on Reconstruction how difficult life has become for her, and others like her, who have been displaced by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
"I ask all of you who are present here, are the Fukushima people in your sight?" Takako Shishido said to the 40 lawmakers at the Dec. 2 meeting.
The 39-year-old Shishido, along with her husband and two children, voluntarily evacuated from Date, Fukushima Prefecture, to a housing complex in Sapporo. Shishido heads a neighborhood association of about 160 households of evacuees in the housing complex.
Gaku Hasegawa, a committee member from the Liberal Democratic Party, had asked Shishido to speak during the meeting on deliberations over compensation to voluntary evacuees.
A hush fell over the crowd when Shishido held back tears to explain how painful it was to live under the distrustful eyes of her friends and relatives.
" 'Why (are you leaving) when the central government says it's safe (and has issued no evacuation order)? You are lucky people, because you have places to flee to,' " she said she had been told by people critical of her decision to leave Fukushima.
Hasegawa also summoned Toshio Nishizawa, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, to the meeting.
"I will take your hardship seriously," Nishizawa said after hearing Shishido speak, "and will do my utmost to engage in compensation payments and other efforts."
Masaharu Nakagawa, the minister of science and technology, apologized for the delay in compensation payments to voluntary evacuees. He said he hoped to have a compensation policy drawn up at a meeting of the government's Dispute Reconciliation Committee for Nuclear Damage Compensation on Dec. 6.