OTSUCHI, Iwate Prefecture--Keiko Nakajima lost her parents, her brother and her sister-in-law in the tsunami of March 11, 2011.
OTSUCHI, Iwate Prefecture--Keiko Nakajima lost her parents, her brother and her sister-in-law in the tsunami of March 11, 2011.
On March 10, she and her 23-year-old daughter, Yukiko, prayed for them at the Koganji temple in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, their former hometown.
Two years on, even the temple still bears deep scars. Many of the tombstones that toppled that day remain leveled, one example of many of the town's slow progress in recovery.
Nakajima, a 55-year-old nursing care manager, lost her apartment in the disaster. She now lives in an apartment in Sendai, capital of neighboring Miyagi Prefecture, like many displaced people still living in temporary accommodation. She has been there for the past year and a half.
She said she and her daughter have decided they will not return to live in Otsuchi, even though it is their ancestral hometown.
"The only thing I find whenever I return here is how more overgrown it has become with weeds," she said. "To begin with, I thought about returning to Otsuchi, but now I have lost interest."
The ashes of her parents, brother and sister-in-law are now in the home of one of her brothers, who lives in Chiba Prefecture. So, too, are urns containing the ashes of her ancestors, taken there from Otsuchi because she made a conscious decision never to return.
The home of Nakajima's parents was in a high-risk part of town.
Town officials have asked survivors who legally still reside there--even if their homes no longer exist--about their preferences concerning relocation several times in the past two years. However, the town has failed to suggest candidate sites.
Nakajima said her friends there express concern for her whenever she visits the town.
Although she was in Otsuchi only the day before, she said she would skip a local memorial ceremony for the victims on March 11, the second year anniversary of the disaster, because she and her daughter had to return to Sendai.
"We are sorry that we will not stay to attend it," Nakajima said. "But both of us must work. We have to earn a living."
Last year, the town polled those affected and asked: How long would you be prepared to wait until housing is built?
"Three years," was the most common answer, with 17 percent of the respondents citing that number.
Before the disaster, the town had a population of about 16,000. It now numbers around 13,000, and around 2,000 people have moved away for good.
Local officials fear that many more may follow if the pace of recovery does not speed up.
About 4,700 people are still living in temporary housing in the town. Officials estimate that 33 hectares of land will be needed to relocate them all, but they can find plots adding up to only 70 percent of that space at present.
And the town plans to build 980 public housing units for affected residents, but it projects that only half can be constructed in the course of the coming year.
Ahead of the disaster anniversary, town employees were busy visiting owners of land that the town plans to buy for the public housing project.
But they said the damage was such that in some cases it is not easy to determine the property boundaries.
The task is complicated by the fact that most of the 30 town employees working for acquisition of plots are on loan from other local governments across the country, provided under an emergency program to augment the town's manpower. It lost nearly 40 town hall staffers in the disaster.
Such employees are often unfamiliar with the local area. Moreover, their assignment is for a limited period.
Otsuchi Mayor Yutaka Ikarigawa has visited those local governments to urge them to continue sending workers--and to dispatch them in greater numbers.
But in the new fiscal year beginning in April, the town is expected to be down by 20 staff.
Otsuchi officials said there is a widening disparity in the amount of rebuilding work achieved between small and large municipalities.
They said this town's future hinges on whether it can give victims a road map toward construction of new homes within the coming year.