Evacuees from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster are still being forced to live apart from their families more than two and a half years later due to cramped temporary housing and for other reasons, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.
Evacuees from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster are still being forced to live apart from their families more than two and a half years later due to cramped temporary housing and for other reasons, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.
Based on data from municipal governments, The Asahi Shimbun compared the number of housing units for evacuees from seven towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture, all of whose residents have been ordered to evacuate, with the number of households in the seven municipalities counted as of March 2011.
The findings showed the number of units is 1.3 times larger than before the disaster, whereas the number of residents had been declining in all the seven towns and villages.
The number of housing units is about 60 percent higher regarding Iitate, some 40 percent more in connection with Katsurao, and about 30 percent greater regarding Namie and Okuma, respectively.
According to the survey, many large families in rural areas are still living separated, more than 1,000 days after the nuclear disaster began to unfurl, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.
An Iitate village government official said temporary housing and apartments in Fukushima city, where many evacuees currently reside, are typically too small for large families to live together.
There are also many cases where members of big families are living in coastal areas and inland regions separately, according to the village government official. The official said there are many jobs related to post-disaster reconstruction in coastal areas, while inland regions, typically far from the nuclear plant, are believed to be safer.
What is at issue is that many elderly people are being forced to live apart from younger family members, meaning that support by local governments is becoming necessary. There are currently 140,000 nuclear disaster evacuees in Fukushima Prefecture.
Half of the evacuees are from municipalities other than the seven towns and villages, meaning a number of individuals in wider areas may be separated from their families, as well.
(This article was written by Takayuki Kihara and Shinichi Fujiwara.)