Forgetting Fukushima

"This is an act to socially hide the real number of evacuees, which could lead to a cover-up of the seriousness of the incident," Akira Imai, chief researcher of the Japan Research Institute for Local Government, told Asahi Shimbun . "The evacuee number is an index that is used to consider measures to support evacuees. The current situation should be reflected properly in the numbers."

Evacuees forced through the cracks

The typical experience of Fukushima evacuees has been a collapse of social networks, reduced income and reduced employment opportunities, endless uncertainty, and physical and mental ill-health. A growing number of evacuees face further trauma arising from the end of housing subsidies, forcing them out of temporary accommodation and in some cases forcing them back to their original homes against their will.

Around 16,000 people who refuse to return to their original homes had been financially abandoned as of January 2019, according to the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center.

In addition to fiddling with the numbers to artificially deflate the number of evacuees, an increasingly hostile attitude is being adopted towards evacuees to pressure them to leave temporary accommodation and thereby to reduce the evacuee count. The reduction and cessation of housing subsidies is the main component of this problem.

Some years ago, the support structure was modest at best, and many evacuees fell through the cracks. Now, evacuees are being forced through the cracks to reduce expenditure and to create a sense of normality ahead of the 'Reconstruction Olympics'.

The human impact of government policies - national and prefectural governments - are detailed by Seto Daisaku from the Evacuation Cooperation Center. Some evacuees face a doubling of rental payments, some have been deemed " illegal occupants", some face legal action to have them evicted.

National and local governments promote these policies as necessary to foster independence among evacuees, but as Seto Daisaku notes , "since their income in the places they have evacuated to has dropped precipitously, far from becoming independent they will fall deeper into poverty."

The April 2019 Asahi Shimbun editorial noted:

After years of living away from home, many evacuees are also struggling with problems such as reduced incomes, the difficulties of finding jobs, deteriorating health and isolation. Some are suffering from poverty, anxiety about losing their housing due to the termination of public financial support and physical and mental illness. ... The government's response to the problem has been grossly insufficient.

In an October 2018 report, United Nations Special Rapporteur Baskut Tuncak urged the Japanese government to halt the ongoing relocation of evacuees who are children and women of reproductive age to areas of Fukushima where radiation levels remain higher than what was considered safe or healthy before the nuclear disaster in 2011.

Tuncak said the Japanese government's decision to raise by 20 times what it considered to be an acceptable level of radiation exposure was deeply troubling, highlighting in particular the potential impact on the health and wellbeing of children.