Hiroki Sakaue
Two and a half years after the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake, frustrations remain high for displaced victims struggling with worries over unclear future and isolation due to broken family ties and local community bonds. Local medical services which support the people’s health are also in a critical condition. The Japanese government insists on taking reconstruction measures with consideration for the people of the quake-hit areas, but it is questionable whether the measures really contribute to the top priority goal of rebuilding the people’s lives.
320 people who evacuated from Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, after the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant accident live in temporary housing units located in Minamiyanome district in the city of Fukushima. Most of the residents are elderly people who stay in their houses most of the time.
Sadami Namie, 80, who moved into a temporary housing six months after the disaster, says with downcast eyes that he used to be busy harvesting Hosui pears at this time of the year, but now he thinks restarting farming is becoming an unrealistic dream.
Namie used to grow pears on a 1.6-hectare farmland in Namie with his son. The village which he used to live, located within 10 km from the nuclear power plant, had been designated as a planned evacuation zone, but now the area is reclassified as a residence-restricted area which can be visited temporarily. But what Namie saw when he visited his home was a devastated pear orchard. The orchard was overgrown with weeds and branches which he had carefully pruned were growing in all directions. Nearby rice fields were filled with goldenrods, looking like a yellow carpet. Namie was wordless.
“Even if we were allowed to return to our hometown, it would take at least three years to recover the abandoned pear orchard,” Namie says. If too much surface soil is removed in order to decontaminate the farmland, it would give damage to the roots of the pear trees and make them wither. Farm machinery, which he had carefully maintained, were no longer usable, and it would cost a lot of money to repair them.
Even if he spent three years without income to reclaim the orchard and managed to ship pears, nobody knows how they will be received by the market. “A farmer over 80 years old like me cannot make plans with many unknowns,” Namie says. “I also doubt whether young farmers will be willing to devote themselves to farming,” he says, referring to his son’s family who evacuated to Kazo, Saitama Prefecture.
Sadami Namie (right) and other residents of the temporary housing complex talk about their worries for the future in front of a meeting house of the complex located in Minamiyanome, Fukushima Prefecture.
On Thursday, August 15, residents of the temporary housing complex and members of the town council held a meeting to exchange opinions. In the meeting, Namie municipal government presented a scenario of completing decontamination by the end of fiscal 2016 and enabling people to return after constructing necessary infrastructure. But not one reconstruction plan or prospect was shown for farming which is the town’s key industry.
Masatomo Takeuchi, a 65-year-old farmer who lives in the temporary housing complex, could not help feeling disappointed. “Now that most of the companies have moved out of town, agricultural industry is one of the few sectors which can offer employment opportunities,” Takeuchi says. “It is a pity that we could not see any future map to reconstruct farming in our hometown.”
People from different villages in Namie live in the temporary housing complex. A meeting house located in the complex grounds is used to offer residents opportunity to gather and create a local community in the complex. But Kiichi Ura, head of the residents’ association, says it is difficult to bring people together and make them participate in various activities, as they still maintain strong feelings for the communities they came from.
Although volunteer groups hold a number of events to encourage the residents, many of them are elderly people and tend to think they want to be left alone, thus making themselves more and more isolated, Ura says.
The temporary housing units are expected to be taken down after two years, and the residents will have to either return to Namie or move to disaster recovery public housing units to be built in three areas in the prefecture. Disaster victims are at a critical turning point of deciding between two choices – rebuilding their lives in a hometown with no prospects for the future or moving to a new place without any community ties.
(Sept. 11, 2013)