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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

N°05/13 MAY 2013 | GOVERNANCE

Reiko Hasegawa (IDDRI)

JAPAN’S 2011 DISASTER: RESPONSES TO NATURAL AND INDUSTRIAL CATASTROPHES The triple disaster that hit the Tohoku region of Japan on 11 March 2011

triggered a massive human displacement: more than 400,000 people

evacuated their homes as a gigantic tsunami induced by a magnitude 9.0

earthquake engulfed the coastal areas, and the following nuclear accident

in Fukushima released a large amount of radioactive materials into the

atmosphere. This study analyses the disaster response, with a particular

focus on evacuation of the population, and social consequences of this

complex crisis, based on intensive fieldwork carried out one year after the

catastrophe. It reveals that the responses of the Japanese authorities and

population were significantly different between a natural disaster and an

industrial (man-made) accident.

TWO EVACUATION PATTERNS: RISK PERCEPTION VERSUS VULNERABILITY Being prone to both earthquakes and tsunamis, Japan had been preparing

itself against such risks for many years. A tsunami alert was immediately

issued and the population knew how and where to evacuate. In contrast,

the evacuation from the nuclear accident was organised in total chaos, as

a severe accident or large-scale evacuation had never been envisaged—let

alone exercised—before the disaster. The population was thus forced to

flee with no information as to the gravity of the accident or radiation risk.

In both cases, the risk perception prior to the catastrophe played a key role

in determining the vulnerability of the population at the time of the crisis.

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES FROM THE DISASTER: DIVIDED COMMUNITIES AND FAMILIES While tsunami evacuees are struggling with a slow reconstruction

process due to financial difficulties, nuclear evacuees are suffering from

uncertainty as to their prospect of return. One year after the accident,

the Japanese authorities began to encourage nuclear evacuees to return

to the areas contaminated by radiation according to a newly established

safety standard. This triggered a vivid controversy within the affected

communities, creating a rift between those who trust the government’s

notion of safety and those who do not. The nuclear disaster has thus

become a major social disaster in Japan dividing and weakening the

affected communities.w w

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IDDRI’s copyrighted materials are not for commer-

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Unless expressly stated otherwise, the findings,

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materials are those of the various authors and are

not necessarily those of IDDRI’s board.

Citation: Hasegawa, R. (2013), Disaster Evacua-

tion from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the

Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Studies No.05/13.

IDDRI, Paris, France, 54 p.

The author would like to thank both the French

and Japanese DEVAST teams for their signifi-

cant inputs and contributions in producing this

study, especially Dr Francois Gemenne (IDDRI),

Project Leader of the French DEVAST team, and

Dr Alexandre Magnan (IDDRI) for the very great

support they extended throughout the implemen-

tation of the project. The author also received

valuable and insightful advice from Dr Michel

Colombier, Scientific Director of IDDRI, and

Professor Claude Henry of Sciences Po/Columbia

University (Chair of the Scientific Council of

IDDRI). Special thanks go to Ms Rina Kojima, who

worked as an intern during the fieldwork in Japan.

Without her help, many of the interviews would

have simply been unrealisable. The field research

was successfully conducted thanks to Associate

Professor Norichika Kanie of the Tokyo Institute

of Technology (TITech), who kindly hosted IDDRI

researchers in his office during the field mission,

and also to Mr Shinji Tanada, Ms Yui Nakagawa

and Ms Miho Akatsuka, who provided valuable

assistance in conducting field visits. My sincere

thanks are also extended to all the evacuees and

municipal officers who agreed to be interviewed

despite their difficult circumstances. Lastly, the

author would like to express sincere gratitude to

the French National Research Agency (ANR) and

the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST),

which provided the necessary funding for the

project implementation.

For more information about this document,

please contact the author:

Reiko Hasegawa - [email protected]

ISSN 2258-7535

IDÉES POUR LE DÉBAT 05/2011 3IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Reiko Hasegawa (IDDRI)

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES 4

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 4

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5

1. INTRODUCTION 9

2. METHODOLOGY 9

3. THE GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI 15 3.1. Overview of the event 15 3.2. Disaster response and evacuation 15 3.3. Perception of risk 17 3.4. Prospects of resettlement 19 3.5. Post-disaster challenges 20

4. THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ACCIDENT 22 4.1. Overview of the event 22 4.2. Disaster Response and Evacuation 23 4.3. Perception of risk 28 4.4. Prospects of return 30 4.5. Post-disaster challenges 35

5. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TSUNAMI EVACUATION AND THE NUCLEAR EVACUATION 42

6. CONCLUSIONS 44

REFERENCES 46

APPENDICES 48 Appendix 1: Questionnaire for evacuees

(tsunami and nuclear) 48 Appendix 2: Questionnaire for

self-evacuees (only nuclear) 49 Appendix 3: Questionnaire for

municipalities 50 Appendix 4: List of meetings and seminars

attended during the field research 52 Appendix 5: Map of nuclear power plants

in Japan 53

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Number of persons interviewed 11 Figure 1. Age of evacuees interviewed 11 Figure 2. Gender of evacuees interviewed 11 Table 2. Target municipalities for interviews 13 Map 1. The Tohoku region and three heavily affected prefectures 14

Map 2. Map of Fukushima Prefecture 14 Map 3. Example of a hazard map (Rikuzentakada City) 17

Figure 3. Photos of temporary shelters (prefabricated housing) 19

Figure 4. Changes in the number Fukushima evacuees 23

Figure 5. Changes in the total number of evacuees 23

Table 3. Chronology of the Government’s evacuation orders/recommendations 24

Map 4. Official evacuation zones prior to 30 September 2011 24

Figure 6. Trends in public opinion on nuclear energy 31

Map 5. Reorganisation of the evacuation zone (as from August 2012) 32

Table 4. The government’s proposal on the reorganisation of the evacuation zone 33

Figure 7. Changes in willingness to return 34 Figure 8. Willingness to return according to age 34

Map 6. Radiation contour map of the affected region 40

Table 5. Comparative analysis of the two evacuations 43

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS AAR Association for Aid and Relief

ADRA Adventist Development and Relief

Agency

ANR Agence nationale de la recherche

(France)

FoE Friends of the Earth

ICANPS Investigation Committee on the

Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear

Power Stations of Tokyo Electric Power

Company (appointed by the Cabinet

Office)

IIC Independent Investigation Commission

on the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

JST Japan Science and Technology Agency

M Magnitude

METI Ministry of Economy, Trade and

Industry

MEXT Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,

Science and Technology

MHLW Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

NAIIC Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Independent Investigation Commission

(appointed by The National Diet)

NISA Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency

(under METI)

(replaced by the Nuclear Regulation

Authority in September 2012)

NGO Non-governmental organisation

NSC Nuclear Safety Commission (under the

Cabinet Office)

(integrated into the Nuclear Regulation

Authority since September 2012)

NUMO Nuclear Waste Management

Organization of Japan

OCHA United Nations Office for the

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

TEPCO Tokyo Electric Power Company

TITech Tokyo Institute of Technology

UNU United Nations University

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 1 5IDDRI

3. THE GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI

3.1. Overview of the event

On 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake

struck off the Pacific coast of Tohoku in north-

eastern Honshu, the main island of Japan. The

tremor triggered a tsunami that had a mean inun-

dation height of 10–15 m and a run-up height of

40 m in some places (Mori and Takahashi, 2012:

pp.1 and 13). According to the National Police

Agency, 15,871 people lost their lives, with 2,778

people missing (feared dead) and 6,114 people

injured, as on 10 October 2012.13 Nearly 400,000

houses were either severely damaged or comple-

tely destroyed. The Cabinet Office estimates

the direct financial damage from the disaster at

approximately 16.7 trillion yen (€167 billion).14 It

was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded

in Japan,15 and one of the world’s biggest earth-

quakes after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake

(M 9.1–9.3). The then Japanese Prime Minister,

Naoto Kan, described the disaster as the worst

crisis that Japan has had to face since the Second

World War.

According to the official figure, the disaster dis-

placed a total of 386,739 people, recorded at one

week after the disaster.16 In March 2012, one year

on from the disaster, the number was still as high

as 344,290,17 which indicates that most of the evac-

uees had not yet returned to their home or reset-

tled in permanent shelters. Half of these evacuees

originate from the Fukushima Prefecture and most

were displaced following the nuclear accident.

The number of evacuees who left on account of

the earthquake and tsunami alone can thus be es-

timated at around 170,000 people.

These evacuees are currently accommodated

in three types of temporary shelters: prefabricat-

ed houses, private apartments and public-sector

apartments. As early as April 2011, one month af-

ter the disaster, prefabricated houses were erected

13 Source: National Police Agency (http://www.npa.

go.jp/archive/keibi/biki/higaijokyo.pdf). (in Japa-

nese)

14 Source: Cabinet Office (http://www.bousai.go.jp/oshi-

rase/h23/110624-1kisya.pdf). (in Japanese)

15 Source: Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). (http://

www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/2011_Earthquake/2011_Earth-

quake.html). (in Japanese)

16 Source: Cabinet Office (http://www.cao.go.jp/shien/1-

hisaisha/pdf/5-hikaku.pdf). (in Japanese)

17 Source: Reconstruction Agency (http://www.recon-

struction.go.jp/ topics/ 120413hinansya.pdf). (in Japa-

nese)

to house the displaced population. By May 2012,

a total of 52,858 prefabricated houses had been

constructed for the disaster evacuees, of which

48,884 units are currently occupied.18 There were

68,317 families living in private apartments, with

rent covered by the government. Public-sector

apartments, which were initially built to provide

housing for public servants, were also utilised as

evacuee accommodation. There were 19,041 of

such apartments occupied by the evacuees.

3.2. Disaster response and evacuation

This sub-section presents the major findings from

the field interviews on the disaster response and

evacuation process induced by the earthquake and

tsunami.

Evacuation with a tsunami warning that underestimated the gravity of the situation Japan is a country prone to earthquakes and

tsunamis due to its geological conditions. Over

the years, it has thus developed an adaptation and

disaster prevention mechanism using advanced

technologies. The coastal communities of Tohoku

in particular had prepared themselves for the

eventuality of a disaster, as they have already

experienced many tsunamis. When the earth-

quake hit the Tohoku region on 11 March 2011, the

tsunami warning was issued by the Japan Meteo-

rological Agency (JMA) only three minutes after

the earthquake, and immediately disseminated

to the municipalities likely to be impacted (JMA

2011b: p.3). The warning was then transmitted

through loudspeakers installed in these coastal

towns for the purpose of public broadcasting. The

disaster prevention mechanism was thus acti-

vated as planned. However, the field interviews

revealed that the system had many shortcomings.

First, the estimated tsunami height announced in

the warning was considerably different from the

actual tsunami height. The JMA issued a warning

of a 6 m tsunami for Miyagi Prefecture and no

more than a 3 m tsunami for Iwate and Fukushima

Prefectures (JMA 2011a: p.3). On hearing this

alert, some residents decided to stay on the second

floor of their house instead of evacuating to higher

ground. In addition, the fact that these coastal

towns had 5–10 m breakwaters built along the

coast for protection against the inflow of tsunami

waves further delayed the residents’ decision to

flee. One evacuee from Ofunato City said:

18 Source: Reconstruction Agency (http://www.recon-

struction.go.jp/topics/120521genjototorikumi.pdf). (in

Japanese)

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

When I first heard a tsunami warning for 3

metres, I thought that it would be all right be-

cause the breakwater in our town is higher than

that.

The survey conducted by the JMA in June 2011

on the post-disaster evacuation following the

tsunami alert also collected the similar testimo-

nies from tsunami survivors (JMA, 2011a: p.5).

During our interviews, a couple of evacuees also

mentioned that those who had already evacu-

ated to higher ground even went back home after

hearing the expected height of tsunami, thinking

that they would survive in their house. Further-

more, citizen volunteers from the Community

Fire Brigade19 went to the coastal area to close the

breakwater gates, a task allocated to them by the

contingency planning, expecting the breakwater

to be high enough to stop the tsunami. Many of

them lost their lives as the tsunami engulfed the

breakwaters. In reality, the tsunami that hit the

three prefectures had a 10–15 m mean inundation

height and a 40 m run-up height in some places. It

was only after the arrival of the tsunami that the

JMA amended the height to ‘more than 10 m’ for

all three prefectures. As a result, despite the early

tsunami warning, many residents were caught by

surprise when the actual tsunami arrived.

Later, it was also discovered that the govern-

ment possessed GPS-controlled tide gauge equip-

ment, installed off the coast of Tohoku by the

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and

Tourism (MLIT), which had accurately predicted

the height of the tsunami prior to its arrival on the

coast. According to the presentation made by the

Member of Parliament, Itsunori Onodera, at the

House of Representatives on 2 February 2012, the

information from the GPS gauge was transmitted

to the JMA before the tsunami arrived, but the

JMA did not take this into account until after the

event as it was neither part of their procedure nor

integrated into their method of calculating the tsu-

nami height.20

The second shortcoming of the tsunami warning

was the way in which the warning was disseminat-

ed. The alert is usually transmitted by the relevant

municipal offices via loudspeakers installed all

19 This is a voluntary fire corps formed by the residents of

each community/district in towns and cities. It partici-

pates in and helps the activities of fire fighters on a com-

munity level in case of fire and disasters.

20 The testimony of Itsunori Onodera (Liberal Demo-

cratic Party) at the House of Representatives during the

Budget Committee of the House of Representatives on

2 February 2012 can be viewed on the following site:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efGa86LURHg (in

Japanese).

over town. The interviews with evacuees and local

authorities found that many of these loudspeak-

ers did not function either because the earthquake

had knocked down the speaker poles or because

transmission had been disrupted by the power cut

following the earthquake. According to the survey

conducted by the JMA after the disaster, 17 out of

27 affected municipalities responded that their tsu-

nami alert transmission system had broken down

and did not function properly at the time of the

disaster (Fire and Disaster Management Agency,

2011: p.7). This indicates that the installed system

was simply not well adapted to the magnitude of

the disaster and thus not reliable during the actual

crises.

Thirdly, according to the interviewed survivors,

even when the public speakers were functioning,

the warning message issued by the municipal

office was given in such a polite and calm tone

(‘Please evacuate’) that the residents did not fully

appreciate its gravity. The field research found

that only 3 out of 28 interviewed evacuees had

been prompted to flee on account of the tsunami

warning transmitted by the local authority over

the loudspeakers. The majority of residents fled

after actually witnessing the tsunami, on the ba-

sis of their own judgement or previous experience,

listening to the radio broadcasts, or being directly

warned by the community fire brigade on patrol.

In summary, the tsunami warning during the

11 March disaster, although timely, suffered from

failings with respect to an assessment of the grav-

ity of the tsunami, the transmission system used

and an inadequate communication of the level of

risk.

Relief operations and a limited capacity to accept aid In the field, local governments – both municipal

and prefectural authorities – were the main coor-

dination bodies for relief operations. The inter-

views with municipal officers and aid workers

from NGOs made it clear that the affected local

authorities in the remote coastal region of Tohoku

often lacked experience in working with civil orga-

nisations such as NGOs and citizen volunteers,

and were simply overwhelmed by the number

of offers. In Ishinomaki City, according to the

Director of Peace Boat Disaster Relief Volunteers

Centre (PBV), the offer of volunteers was initially

turned down by the local authority on the grounds

that the city had no coordination or reception

arrangements in place for the volunteers. In addi-

tion, one municipal officer from the same city

recalled during the interview that food aid was

sometimes wasted when the person in charge of

evacuation centres, often municipal officers, did

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 1 7IDDRI

not know how to distribute it properly. According

to him, when food aid of rice balls arrived in an

evacuee camp, the camp manager realised that

the number of rice balls was not enough to distri-

bute to everybody in the camp and thus decided to

simply throw them in the garbage in order to avoid

strife and chaos in the centre. In other instances,

the municipal officials managing the distribution

of relief items required the donating organisa-

tions and companies to provide ‘each survivor

with items that were exactly the same in brand,

type and size’ and, as a result, ‘many resources

were wasted or used inefficiently’ during the relief

operations (Yeoh, 2012: p.8).

The Secretary General of the Association for Aid

and Relief (ARR), which operates mainly in devel-

oping countries, also pointed out the cultural hesi-

tancy to accept aid, specific to Japanese society.

The relief operation in Tohoku made him aware

that, compared to beneficiaries in other countries,

the Japanese population generally lack the capac-

ity to seek help and accept assistance. When help is

offered, Japanese people tend to decline, either to

preserve their dignity or out of concern not to in-

convenience others. Another aid worker from AAR

recalled one scene:

When I arrived at a house badly damaged by

the tsunami, there was a woman still living in-

side the house without any electricity, water or

food. There was no heating stove either. When I

asked her what I could bring to help her, she said

‘No, don’t worry about me. There are people who

are in greater need than I am’.

In Japan, an industrialised country with a func-

tioning social welfare system, the local authori-

ties were simply not used to receiving help and

thus quickly became overwhelmed by all the of-

fers of assistance that came in from all over Japan

and abroad. Thus, the field interviews found that

the population’s cultural hesitancy to receive as-

sistance compounded the difficulties that volun-

teers, NGOs and other private donors encountered

in delivering aid to the needy during the relief

operations.

3.3. Perception of risk

The affected region of Tohoku had long been aware

of the tsunami risk and was thus highly prepared

for the eventuality prior to the disaster. This sub-

section attempts to analyse how this perception

influenced individual decisions to flee and disaster

mitigation during the actual crises.

High perception of tsunami risks Prior to the 11 March disaster, the affected

coastal cities had already been expecting a major

earthquake (M 7.4) to occur with a 99% prob-

ability within the next thirty years, and the To-

hoku region had thus prepared intensively against

such risk (Mori and Takahashi, 2012: p.2). In the

Hazard map of Takada district

Municipal Office

Stairs Public loud speakers

Evacuation route

First Evacuation Point Evacuation Centres Watergate

Map 3. Example of a hazard map (Rikuzentakada City)

STUDY 05/20131 8 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

estimation, the tsunami was predicted to have a

10.2 m run-up height in Rikuzentakada City and

7.3 m in Naraha town.21 On the basis of these esti-

mates, the municipalities had created hazard maps

to mark out the zone at risk of flooding in the re-

spective cities (Map 3). Based on the hazard maps,

evacuation drills were organised regularly. All of

the evacuees interviewed mentioned that they had

been informed of such risk prior to the disaster. In

addition, most of them were familiar with tsunami

disasters and knew what to do in such an event,

having learnt from previous experiences and sto-

ries told by the elderly.

The shortcomings of hazard maps The field survey found that the hazard maps desi-

gned to prepare the residents against tsunamis did

not always help to save lives in the actual disaster.

According to the local government employee of

Rikuzentakada City that we interviewed, the map

had indeed helped to raise the awareness of those

residents living in the predicted inundation zone

and prepare them for an eventual tsunami. On

the other hand, it also created a feeling of reas-

surance for those who lived outside the predicted

inundation zone, giving them the impression that

they were safe from the tsunami risk. Another map

shown by the same official during the interview

indicated the location of houses whose residents

lost their lives, and clearly shows the causal rela-

tionship between the hazard map and the survival

of individuals. On the map,22 it was evident that

victims resided just outside the predicted inun-

dation zone indicated on the hazard map – those

residents who were not included in the tsunami

drills. This suggests that the perception of risk and

the disaster preparedness did, in the vast majority

of cases, influence the survival of individuals at

the time of disaster.

Location of emergency evacuation points All four evacuees interviewed in Ishinomaki City

referred to the disaster as ‘man-made’, critici-

sing the local authority for insufficient prepare-

dness against a tsunami risk. In Ishinomaki City,

which had the highest death toll (3,47123) of all the

affected towns, survivors accuse the shortcomings

of the municipality’s disaster preparation as a main

21 Information provided by Rikuzentakada City and

Naraha town councils during the interview.

22 The map was shown to us by the official of Rikuzen-

takada City during the interview but he declined to pro-

vide us with a copy of such a sensitive document out of

respect for the victims’ families.

23 Source: Miyagi Prefectural Government (http://www.

pref.miyagi.jp/kikitaisaku/higasinihondaisinsai/

pdf/09071600.pdf) (in Japanese).

cause of this high fatality rate. One of their accusa-

tions targets the location of emergency evacuation

points. These points were generally designated at

schools and public buildings but also at public car

parks or a flat field. Originally intended as gathe-

ring points in case of fires or earthquakes, some of

them were situated on lower ground close to the

shoreline or on river banks. When the earthquake

hit on 11 March 2011, many inhabitants gathered

at these emergency points instead of taking refuge

on higher ground, quite simply because these

places were regularly used during disaster drills

as the first assembly points. As a result, some of

these residents lost their lives as the locations were

completely inundated by the tsunami. One of the

most tragic examples is the case of Okawa primary

school in Ishinomaki City. Teachers decided to

take the children to the emergency evacuation

point located on the river bank instead of climbing

the hill just next to the school, because it was the

evacuation point designated in the contingency

manual. As a result of this decision, 70% of the

school children and teachers lost their lives when

the tsunami travelled up the river.24

These instances indicate that the evacuation

points were not necessarily adapted to tsunami

disasters and that the residents were not adequate-

ly informed or trained for tsunami evacuations in

Ishinomaki City. This lesson needs to be properly

addressed in future disaster planning.

Vulnerability created by previous tsunami experiences During the interviews, municipal officials and

evacuees mentioned that having previous tsunami

experiences had sometimes adversely affected

individuals’ decision to flee and hence their

survival during the 11 March tsunami. It is often

assumed that people with previous disaster expe-

rience respond more effectively to a subsequent

disaster and that the lessons learnt from past

experience help them to avoid similar mistakes

in the future. As Alexandre Magnan argues in the

context of adaptive capacity to climate change, in

societies regularly exposed to natural hazards, the

experience of risk may confer a certain ability to

respond to a changing climate and to integrate its

effects (Magnan, 2010: p.8). Yet in the case of the

11 March disaster, although experience did help to

24 The newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, ‘3.11 shogen: jidou, nakisakebi outo, gakkou saita no giseisya’ (Author’s

translation: Testimony of 3.11: screaming and vomiting

pupils, the worst death toll for schools), 19 April 2011; the newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, ‘hinan yori giron data 40 fun, giseisyatasuu no ookawasyou’ (Author’s transla-

tion: 40 minutes of discussion instead of evacuation pro-

duced many victims), 13 June 2011.

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 1 9IDDRI

save lives of many, it also created a feeling of reas-

surance with respect to risk and thus made some

of the population more vulnerable. The popula-

tion in these coastal cities had their perception of

the tsunami risk shaped mainly by the experiences

of the 1960 Chile Earthquake (M 9.5), which

produced a 6 m-high tsunami that took 142 lives,

and the 2010 Chile Earthquake (M 8.8), which

occurred almost one year before the 11 March

disaster and induced a 1 m-high tsunami affecting

the region. The field interviews found that these

recent experiences had given the inhabitants a

rather fixed idea that the biggest tsunami likely

to hit their cities would be around 6 metres high.

Moreover, in the past, all of the tsunami warnings

issued by the JMA and transmitted via the munici-

palities had always predicted much higher waves

that those that actually occurred, thus creating

a misperception that an actual tsunami would

always be much smaller than the one predicted

by official warnings. Given such convictions, the

population underestimated the height and gravity

of the tsunami that hit on 11 March 2011. Several

evacuees also asserted that the experience of the

foreshock (M 7.3) that struck on 9 March 2011,

two days before the 3.11 also led the population

to underestimate the tsunami risk of 11 March. At

the time of the foreshock, a tsunami warning was

announced but the tsunami that actually arrived

was only 0.5 m high.

Another fixed idea based on previous experi-

ences involves the time lag between the occur-

rence of an earthquake and the arrival of the ensu-

ing tsunami. According to the interviews, the past

tsunami experiences of the local population had

given them the idea that a tsunami would arrive

10–15 minutes after an earthquake. During the 11

March disaster, the tsunami reached the shoreline

30–40 minutes after the earthquake in the towns

(JMA, 2011b: p.10), contrary to the population’s

expectations. As a result, many of those who had

evacuated to higher ground immediately after the

earthquake decided to return home once the fif-

teen minutes had elapsed, convinced that no tsu-

nami would follow on from the earthquake, and

were hit by the enormous tsunami that arrived

thirty minutes later.

From these instances, we discovered that the

lessons learnt from previous experiences had para-

doxically sometimes been a contributing factor to

the population’s underestimation of the risk or its

misinterpretation of the danger signs during the 11

March disaster, and that their experience had not

always helped to mitigate the impacts. The inter-

views with tsunami survivors led us to the follow-

ing factual conclusion: while risk perception based

on former experience did indeed help to save lives

of many, in the face of an extreme disaster that ex-

ceeded all assumptions in terms of its magnitude,

it also produced the reverse effect by creating false

assumptions as to the level of risk.

3.4. Prospects of resettlement

From the interviews, we learnt that most of the

evacuees wish to resettle on new land located

on higher ground either because they no longer

feel safe living in the place where their houses

had been swept away or because it is not emotio-

nally possible to return as they are deeply trau-

matised by the loss of family members. One year

after the disaster, the resettlement process began

but evacuees were encountering many adminis-

trative and financial obstacles. The resettlement

Figure 3. Photos of temporary shelters (prefabricated housing)

Photo (top): A prefabricated housing unit in Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, for tsunami evacuees. Taken by R. Hasegawa on 22 March 2012. Photo (bottom): A prefabricated housing unit in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, for nuclear evacuees. Taken by R. Hasegawa on 5 April 2012.

STUDY 05/20132 0 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

plan proposed by the government has three main

components. First, the local authority purchases

the land owned by each evacuee affected by the

tsunami. With the money from this sale, evacuees

are expected to purchase new land for resettle-

ment. Although the cost of house construction is

not covered by the scheme, evacuees are entitled

to receive financial assistance of up to around

€30,000 as well as a special low-interest housing

loan set up by the government worth up to

€146,000 in order to rebuild their houses.25

The field research found that evacuees were

finding it very hard to resettle despite the various

forms of government assistance. First, there is a

problem of ‘double loans’. Some evacuees contin-

ue to pay for the mortgage of a house swept away

by the tsunami. For these evacuees, it is extremely

difficult to commit to another housing loan, even if

it is part of the government scheme. Furthermore,

many of them are still unemployed as their offices

and factories were destroyed by the tsunami and

have not yet been reconstructed. Secondly, pur-

chasing the new land for resettlement is difficult

simply because land located on higher ground is

scarce in some cities or because landowners are

sometimes unwilling to sell land that has been in

the family for generations. In other instances, the

land is sometimes protected as a natural reserve

and cannot be purchased, or landowners cannot

be found as they are either dead or living abroad.

Another obstacle stems from one of the condi-

tions laid down by the government resettlement

scheme: at least five evacuee families must join

together and decide collectively to resettle in the

same place in order to benefit from the scheme.

This condition was initially aimed at maintaining

community ties, but it is instead creating many

problems on the ground as the population is now

scattered around different parts of the town or

sometimes outside the town. This means that it is

extremely difficult for the evacuees to get in touch

with friends and former neighbours who would

agree to resettle together.

Lastly, the field interviews found that the man-

agement of resettlement schemes was very poorly

synchronised by the local authorities. Many mu-

nicipal governments lost patience with what they

considered to be a slow or inadequate process and

began their own assistance schemes to comple-

ment the government scheme. The problem is that

they started these without consulting neighbour-

ing towns, which has sparked off jealousy among

the different communities and made it difficult to

reach a consensus within the evacuee community.

25 Source: Cabinet Office.

For example, Ishinomaki and Rikuzentakada Cit-

ies have proposed to purchase the tsunami-affect-

ed land for 70–80% of its original value, while

Higashi-Matsuyama City (just next to Sendai City)

has offered the evacuees up to 80–97% of the land

value.26 As a result, evacuees in some localities

began to renegotiate the terms of resettlement

schemes with the municipal administration, thus

causing further delay in the whole resettlement

process.

In this context, the resettlement process for

evacuees is not advancing at a full speed. The situ-

ation is exerting an additional psychological strain

on the evacuees, who have already suffered from

the loss of close relatives or friends and now find

themselves in the plight of displaced persons in

camps and temporary shelters.

3.5. Post-disaster challenges

The following points are developed to illustrate the

situation and challenges facing tsunami evacuees

and the affected communities one year after the

disaster.

Reinventing the affected communities – ‘building back better’ Prior to the disaster, Tohoku was already a margi-

nalised region facing the challenge of an aging

population and the migration of its youth to

larger cities in search of better job opportunities.

In 2010, 26.3% of the population in Tohoku was

over 65 years old, 3.3% higher than the national

average (and compared to 16.8% in France).27 The

economy of Tohoku was mainly based on agricul-

ture and fisheries, with the average wage standing

17% lower than the national average.28 This trend

is likely to accelerate in the wake of the disaster.

One year after, reconstruction operations were

intensified in the affected towns. The govern-

ment budget for reconstruction amounts to €150

billion for the year 2011 and €37 billion for 2012.29

Yet, so far, the authorities’ reconstruction efforts

have seemed to focus more on rebuilding the

physical infrastructures – the traditional notion of

26 Source: Japan Institute of Construction Engineering

(JICE) (http://www.jice.or.jp/sinsai/sinsai_result.

php?q=%93y%92n%94%83%82%A2%8E%E6%82%E

8&t=2). (in Japanese)

27 Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-

tions (http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2010/

kihon1/pdf/gaiyou1.pdf) (in Japanese).

28 Source: Cabinet Office (http://www.esri.cao.go.jp/jp/

sna/data/data_list/kenmin/files/contents/pdf/gai-

you2_1.pdf) (in Japanese).

29 Source: Reconstruction Agency (http://www.recon-

struction.go.jp/).

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 2 1IDDRI

reconstruction – and less on smaller but innovative

social and economic projects to revitalise the com-

munities.30 During the interviews, several evacu-

ees expressed concern that many young people

were leaving the town due to the lack of job op-

portunities after the disaster. According to them,

the reconstruction works created many temporary

job opportunities but these were confined to the

construction sector and contracts were on a short-

term basis. Unable to find stable employment,

many young people, especially those with qualifi-

cations, began to leave the town for big cities. Ac-

cording to a survey of 1,033 evacuees in Iwate, Mi-

yagi and Fukushima Prefectures conducted by the

newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, between January and

March 2012, 40% of them were still unemployed

either because they had lost their jobs or their em-

ployers had suspended activity following the dis-

aster.31 The results of the same survey showed that

the affected cities, including Ishinomaki City, had

on average lost 6% of their population between

2011 and 2012 (excluding the number of dead and

missing due to the disaster) and, in the case of Ri-

kuzentakada City, the figure was 13.8%.32

Under these circumstances, rebuilding the af-

fected communities as they were before the dis-

aster seems not only inefficient but also unsus-

tainable both demographically and economically.

The affected municipalities are thus dealing with

the enormous challenge of implementing a well-

thought-out reconstruction plan to ensure a rapid

recovery from the disaster, whilst at the same time

dealing with the chronic problem of a shrinking

economy and aging population.

The elderly and persons with reduced mobility were the hardest hit The tsunami claimed many lives among the elderly

and persons with reduced mobility living at home

or in specialised facilities. During one interview, an

Iwaki City employee explained that, for those who

were living with their families, it was expected that

the family members would help them to evacuate.

But as the earthquake hit during the day, these

members were either at work or at school and were

unable to return home in time to rescue them.

The elderly and persons with reduced mobility

living alone at home were allocated to designated

neighbours to assist them in case of disaster. But,

likewise, these designated helpers were at work

30 The Japan Times, ‘Reconstructing Tohoku to fit today’, 2 April 2012.

31 Asahi Shimbun, ‘Jinko-gen keieishano-urei’ (Author’s translation: Falling population, business owners’ grief),

11 March 2012.

32 Asahi Shimbun, Ibid.

and could not assist those who needed help to

evacuate. As a result, many lost their life as they

were unable to move from the house. According

to the 2011 White Paper on Disaster Prevention

edited by the Cabinet Office, 64.4% of fatalities

from the 11 March disaster were over 60 years old,

whereas the proportion of the population over 60

in the region was 31%. The mortality rate for those

in their seventies rose as high as 23.7%, and 21.8%

for those in their eighties.

As for persons with reduced mobility, it was re-

ported that their fatality rate was 2.5 times higher

than that for all the affected populations.33 Accord-

ing to a survey conducted by a network of associa-

tions for disabled persons, Japan Disability Forum

Miyagi, the average fatality rate among 13 affect-

ed municipalities in Miyagi Prefecture was 1.4%

while the rate for the persons with disabilities was

as high as 3.5% and 3.9% for those with physical

disabilities.

These statistics show that the disaster preven-

tion measures were flawed when it came to ad-

dressing the needs of vulnerable groups in case of

disaster, a lesson that should be taken into account

for the future disaster preparations.

Divided communities The field interviews with evacuees found that the

disaster had caused tensions and divisions among

the local population, which still persisted one year

on. While stories of mutual help and solidarity

were often emphasised by the evacuees, they also

pointed up the different treatments and discrimi-

nations in the distribution of the aid received at

the time of disaster. It emerged from the inter-

views that the evacuees categorise themselves into

three groups: those who lost their houses and all

their belongings in the tsunami; those who lost

their houses but not their belongings due to the

earthquake; and those whose houses were only

partially destroyed. The third group of evacuees

was considered ‘less affected’ compared to the first

two groups and thus regarded as ‘less qualified’

to receive aid. As an evacuee from Rikuzentakada

City explained:

When someone from a partially destroyed

house came to an evacuation centre to get food

and relief items, the evacuees in the centre open-

ly complained that the person did not have the

right to receive assistance because her house was

not completely destroyed. After such experiences,

33 The newspaper, Nikkei Shimbun, ‘Higashinihon- daishinsai no shougaisyasibouritsu, zentaino 25 bai.

Nigeokureta kanousei’ (Author’s translation: The fatal-

ity rate from the Great East Japan disaster is 2.5 times

higher among the disabled population: a possibility that

they were unable to evacuate in time)’, 30 July 2012.

STUDY 05/20132 2 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

those who were living in partially destroyed

houses with no electricity, water or food often

had to survive by their own means, hesitating to

seek help.

In addition, disparities also appeared depending

on the evacuation centres. Large evacuation cen-

tres that attracted media attention received many

offers of assistance from all over Japan, while small

centres were most often ignored. These experi-

ences have created jealousy and mistrust among

neighbours and friends, leaving deep scars in rela-

tionships that had been nurtured over generations

in these remote coastal communities.

While the public service is overwhelmed by re-

construction projects and the evacuee resettle-

ment process is stagnating, the economic and so-

cial disparities that existed among the inhabitants

before the disaster are also growing larger and

more visible. According to the aid workers inter-

viewed from Child Fund Japan in Ofunato City and

PBV in Ishinomaki City, both of which assist evacu-

ees in prefabricated housing units, evacuees with

financial means tend to move out of the temporary

shelters quickly as they construct their new home

without waiting for financial assistance from the

government, whereas the vulnerable and the mar-

ginalised are left behind. Those with a strong so-

cial network and personal connections also move

out rapidly as they easily find new job opportuni-

ties. Information Technology (IT) literacy is also

creating a new disparity. Evacuees who know how

to surf the Internet are able to find more informa-

tion on the various forms of assistance offered by

the authorities, NGOs and individuals, while those

who are not IT-literate have little access to such in-

formation as they rely solely on written material.

In the absence of an effective public service during

post-disaster recovery, this disparity is exacerbat-

ing the rifts in communities and leaving vulner-

able populations in even greater destitution and a

state of traumatism.

4. THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER PLANT ACCIDENT

4.1. Overview of the event

The earthquake and the ensuing tsunami caused

serious damage to the installation of Fukushima

Daiichi nuclear power plant situated 230 km north

of Tokyo. This resulted in hydrogen explosions

and nuclear meltdowns of three of the six reac-

tors on site, due to the loss of all power supply and

subsequently of control of the cooling systems.

Tens of thousands of residents had to evacuate

their homes as radiation leaked into the atmos-

phere, the sea and the food chain. Japanese offi-

cials rated the incident at level 7 (the maximum) on

the International Nuclear and Radiological Event

Scale (INES) defined by International Atomic

Energy Agency (IAEA), which ranks the accident

as the largest nuclear disaster since the 1986 Cher-

nobyl accident (which is also rated at level 7). The

post-accident management measures, including

the decommissioning of the crippled reactors and

compensation for the nuclear evacuees, are esti-

mated at a cost of more than €200 billion.34

One year after the disaster, there were more than

160,000 evacuees, known as nuclear evacuees,

from the Fukushima Prefecture. They represent

47% of all the persons displaced by the 11 March

catastrophe.35 A total of 11 municipalities (113,000

residents) were forced to evacuate following the

government’s evacuation orders. In addition to this

forced displacement, there were also cases of vol-

untary evacuation where residents living outside

of the official evacuation zone became worried

about radiation effects and decided to flee on their

own. As the Japanese government and TEPCO re-

vealed the true scale of the radioactive contamina-

tion, there was a gradual increase in the number

of voluntary evacuees, also referred to as self-evac-

uees. It is very difficult to obtain official statistics

on the number of self-evacuees but we can esti-

mate these at 47,000 from the difference between

the total number of evacuees from the Fukushima

Prefecture and the number of forced evacuees

from the evacuation zone. In September 2011, the

number was estimated at 50,327 by the Fukushima

Prefecture.36 This trend was continuing one year

34 Source: Japan Centre for Economic Research (JCER)

(http://www.jcer.or.jp/policy/pdf/pe%28JCER20110

719%EF%BC%89.pdf). (in Japanese)

35 Source: Reconstruction Agency.

36 Source: MEXT. (http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/

shingi/chousa/kaihatu/016/shiryo/__icsFiles/afield-

file/ 2011/11/25/1313502_3.pdf).(in Japanese)

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 2 3IDDRI

after the disaster: the number of nuclear evacu-

ees is increasing rather than decreasing (Figure 4)

and is also pushing up the overall number of evac-

uees from the 11 March disaster (Figure 5). This

phenomenon is specific to the 11 March catastro-

phe and is not often observed for other types of

disaster.

4.2. Disaster Response and Evacuation

This sub-section describes the evacuation process

implemented following the Fukushima nuclear

accident. The field interviews found that the

affected municipalities and population were

taken by surprise and that the evacuation was

organised in a chaotic manner, which reveals that

the scenario of a serious accident had never been

envisaged or adequately prepared for prior to the

accident.

Changes to the evacuation zones From the onset of the crisis, the Japanese govern-

ment issued various evacuation orders with vastly

differing instructions and timing. From what

evacuees said in the interviews, this created a

great deal of confusion, uncertainty and distress

among the affected population. Table 3 gives the

chronology of the different evacuation orders

issued by the government. As shown in the list,

these orders were gradually expanded over a

three-month period starting on 11 March 2011 and

created four different evacuation zones (Map 4).

First, a compulsory evacuation order was issued

Figure 4. Changes in the number of Fukushima evacuees Figure 5. Changes in the total number of evacuees

Source: Japanese Reconstruction Agency.

for the zone within a 2 km radius37 from the

crippled station and then, in the space of twenty-

four hours, this was extended to a 20 km radius.

This area was designated as a ‘Restricted Zone’

with entry prohibited. Three days after issuing

the compulsory evacuation order, the government

then instructed residents living within a 20–30 km

radius from the station to shelter indoors, in what

was called the ‘Evacuation Prepared Area’. This

‘shelter indoors’ order continued for more than a

month and finally, on 22 April, the same residents

were advised to self-evacuate. On the same day,

the government issued a new evacuation order

to the area where a high airborne radiation level

had been detected and which was located outside

of the 20 km radius evacuation zone (‘Deliberate

Evacuation Area’ shown in Map 4). The residents

living in this area were instructed to evacuate

within a month. It was at this time that the govern-

ment began to take the threshold radiation dose

of 20 millisieverts38 per year (mSv/year) as a basis

for recommending evacuations. In June 2011, the

government began to identify ‘hot spots’ where

an air radiation dose of more than 20mSv/year

had been detected outside the evacuation zones

(‘Specific Spots recommended for Evacuation’

37 This first evacuation order was issued by the Fukushima

prefectural government as a precautionary measure.

38 The sievert (Sv) is a unit to measure the radiation dose.

1 sievert (Sv) = 1,000 millisieverts (mSv). The Interna-

tional Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)

recommends limiting artificial irradiation of the public

to an average of 1 mSv per year, not including medical

and occupational exposure (ICRP 2007).

150 000

152 000

154 000

156 000

158 000

160 000

162 000

164 000

NOV 2011

DEC 2011

JAN 2012

FEB 2012

MAR 2012

APR 2012

MAY 2012

JUN 2012

325 000

330 000

335 000

340 000

345 000

350 000

NOV 2011

DEC 2011

JAN 2012

FEB 2012

MAR 2012

APR 2012

MAY 2012

JUN 2012

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Table 3. Chronology of the Government’s evacuation orders/recommendations 2011 Target Orders Name of the Zone

11 March 2 km radius from the station Compulsory Evacuation (issued by the Fukushima prefectural government)

Restricted Zone

3 km radius Compulsory Evacuation Restricted Zone

12 March 10 km radius Compulsory Evacuation Restricted Zone

20 km radius Compulsory Evacuation Restricted Zone

15 March Between 20–30 km Shelter indoors Evacuation Prepared Area

22 April Between 20–30 km Shelter indoors or evacuation by own means

Evacuation Prepared Area

Areas with air radiation dose more than 20 mSv/year

Evacuation within 1 month Deliberate Evacuation Area

16 June Spots with air radiation dose of over 20 mSv/year

Recommended for Evacuation Specific Spots Recommended for Evacuation

30 Sept. Between 20–30 km Lifting of the order to shelter indoors or evacuation by own means

Lifting of Evacuation Prepared Area

Map 4. Official evacuation zones prior to 30 September 2011

Source: Ministry of Industry, Trade and Economy.

Specific Spots recommended for evacuation

Deliberate Evacuation Area

Evacuation Prepared Area

Restricted Area

Minamisoma

Namie

Futaba

Ookuma

Tomioka

Naraha

Hirono

Tamura

Koriyama

Fukushima Iitate

Katsurao

Kawauchi

Kawamata

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (No.1)

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (No.2)

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 2 5IDDRI

shown in Map 4). In this fourth category, the

government first designates the spots after measu-

ring radiation levels on a house-by-house basis

upon a resident’s request and then issues a ‘recom-

mendation for evacuation’ instead of ‘orders’. If

the residents of the house qualified as a hot spot

decide to evacuate, the government provides

financial assistance.

On 30 September 2011, the government decid-

ed to do away with the second evacuation zone,

‘Evacuation Prepared Area’, situated within a 20–

30 km radius from the station. Then in March 2012,

it proposed reorganising the ‘Restricted Zone’ and

‘Deliberate Evacuation Area’ into three new areas

according to the airborne radiation level, thus cre-

ating a zone to which evacuees were expected to

return. This latest government proposal will be

analysed in detail in the following sub-section.

Through these different decisions, taken one

after the other by the government in a rather ad

hoc manner, both the affected municipalities and

residents were obliged to evacuate repeatedly from

one place to another with scant information about

their future prospects. The field interviews with

evacuees found that this caused significant psycho-

logical stress for the evacuees during their flight.

Improvised evacuation orders The field survey revealed that at the outset of

the crisis, the municipalities had very little infor-

mation on the accident or the evacuation orders

issued by the government. Only Futaba town, one

of the two towns39 hosting the crippled nuclear

power plant, received the initial evacuation order

from the central government.40 The other three

municipalities that we interviewed, Naraha, Mina-

misoma and Iwaki, learnt of the first evacuation

order only through a television broadcast and

were not directly notified by the government.

Naraha town, which hosts another nuclear power

plant (Fukushima No.2), managed to obtain some

information on the situation of the Fukushima

No.1 nuclear power plant from the plant operator,

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO),41 thanks

to the relationship that it had built up with TEPCO

over the years. On the basis of this information,

Naraha town made the decision to evacuate the

entire population, while Minamisoma City, for

39 The other town that jointly hosts the crippled nuclear

station is Okuma town.

40 From the DEVAST interview with the municipality;

NAIIC, 2012: pp.50-61.

41 TEPCO is the largest of the ten electric utility companies

in Japan and the fourth largest in the world after the

German RWE, the French EDF and the German E.ON. It

was set up in 1951 and de facto nationalised in July 2012 after the Fukushima nuclear accident.

example, had nothing but the televised broad-

casts to guide its decision. According to the survey

conducted by NAIIC (NAIIC, 2012: pp.50-61),42

none of the affected municipalities, except two

towns hosting the damaged nuclear power station,

were informed officially of the evacuation order:

they had to decide on their own to evacuate their

residents.

According to the Disaster Prevention Guideline43

drawn up by the Nuclear Safety Commission of

Japan (NSC) in 1980 based on the Act on Special

Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Prepar-

edness, Field Emergency Response Headquarters

(referred to as the Off-Site Centre) should be set

up within 5 km of the power station in case of an

accident. The Off-Site Centre, comprising per-

sonnel from the nuclear regulatory agencies, the

nuclear operator and the concerned municipali-

ties, is in charge of managing the crisis and mak-

ing decisions about the evacuation zone. During

the 11 March disaster, this Off-Site Centre could

not function properly given that communication

equipment was damaged by the earthquake and

that the personnel who were supposed to assemble

there did not arrive as they judged the location of

the centre too close to the affected station and thus

too dangerous (Asahi Shimbun Special Reporting

Unit44, 2012: pp.72-74). Given these circumstances,

the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo took over the

role of the Off-Site Centre when the crisis broke

out. As a result, the procedure for issuing evacu-

ation orders was never applied as planned in the

disaster manual and the municipalities were left

without any specific advice as to how to proceed

with the evacuation.45 Thus, the mayors had no

choice but to act on their own initiative and evacu-

ate all the inhabitants regardless of the govern-

ment’s decisions.

As the municipalities were at a loss at what to

do, local residents took the advice of TEPCO em-

ployees, families and friends and fled before re-

ceiving the official evacuation orders. Among the

23 evacuees interviewed, only 9 had decided to

flee on the basis of the evacuation order from the

local authority. According to them, those who had

information from TEPCO employees were the first

to evacuate, as early as the night of 11 March, while

the majority fled on the following day.

42 The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investi-

gation Commission (NAIIC) set up by National Diet of

Japan.

43 http://www.bousai.ne.jp/vis/shir you/pdf/bousai_

shishin_h2208.pdf

44 Author’s translation of Asahi shimbun tokubetsu houduo bu.

45 Information collected from the interview with the

affected municipalities.

STUDY 05/20132 6 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Privileged evacuees Information on the preoccupying situation at the

power station thus first reached those who had

relatives and friends working for TEPCO at the

damaged station. Many evacuees interviewed told

the same story. On the night of 11 March, a large

number of residents had gathered in the evacua-

tion centres as aftershocks were continuing and

many houses had lost electricity. In the middle of

that night, a handful of residents who had relatives

and friends working for TEPCO started to receive

calls from these contacts on their mobile phones

and discreetly began to leave the evacuation

centres as they had been informed on the real state

of the accident and had been urged to evacuate

immediately. They thus learnt about the severity

of the accident and the need for evacuation even

before the municipality and most of the popula-

tion. What made matters worse is that they did

not inform their fellow residents in the evacuation

centres why they were leaving. As one evacuee

from Futaba town explained:

On the night of the accident, the families of

TEPCO employees started to receive calls on their

mobile phones. After the conversation, they dis-

appeared from the centres. I managed to catch

one of them and asked why she was leaving. She

answered that she wanted to go back home in or-

der to pick up something. After she left, I realised

that her house had been completely destroyed by

the tsunami and so it was impossible for her to go

back home. Then, I understood that she did not

want to tell me that she was actually fleeing from

the town. I felt I was going crazy with fear when I

saw people sneaking out of the evacuation centre

in the middle of the night, one by one, while I was

left stuck and couldn’t do anything.

Those residents fortunate enough to know

someone in TEPCO thus escaped sooner, leaving

the others behind with no information. This inci-

dent deeply traumatised relationships among resi-

dents, a trauma that will probably take a long time

to heal.

Evacuation without preparation The interviews with affected municipalities and

evacuees revealed that the organisation of the

evacuation had been chaotic, as the municipali-

ties had been trying to find ways to evacuate all

of their residents, a situation for which they had

never practiced before. Prior to the accident,

nuclear disaster drills were conducted mainly

for the employees of the plant operator and the

municipal offices along with a limited number

of residents living in the immediate vicinity of

the nuclear power station, and the crisis scenario

used had been of a minimal nature. Out of all the

29 nuclear evacuees interviewed during the field

research, one person had ever participated in such

an exercise. A municipal worker also admitted that

the participation of the residents was limited, a

maximum of 30 persons at a time, mainly elderly,

who were available during the day. The evacuee,

a school teacher in Futaba town, had taken part in

one nuclear disaster drill and described the exer-

cise as follows:

These drills lacked seriousness. The partici-

pants were gathered in the school yard where a

hot meal was prepared and served to everybody.

The atmosphere was rather festive. What’s more,

we were eating and chatting outside during the

exercise as if a radiation leak in the air was never

expected from a nuclear accident.

According to the Disaster Prevention Guideline

of the Nuclear Safety Commission, the zone with-

in an 8–10 km radius from the nuclear power sta-

tions is considered as an Emergency Planning Zone

(EPZ), targeted for nuclear disaster drills and prep-

arations. The guideline explains that the EPZ was

set up ‘based on the assumption that it is almost

impossible to occur technically’46 and that ‘between

8 and 10 km there would be little difference in the

response to the radiation effect’. In other words, as

Akira Imai puts it, ‘the nuclear disaster preparation

was to be implemented only within 8 km and no

further as the EPZ was designated on the basis of a

nearly impossible scenario’ and ‘this, indeed, con-

stitutes the basis of the notion in public policy that

nuclear power stations were accident-free’47 (Imai,

2012a: p.24). The NSC’s report on nuclear disaster

drills conducted during 2008 in 11 prefectures, for

example, shows that the evacuation exercise for

residents was conducted only within a radius of

1–3 km from the stations.48 Therefore, at the time

of the crisis, the municipalities and residents were

not at all prepared for such an evacuation and thus

completely at a loss. As a result, in the absence of

an organised evacuation led by the municipalities

as planned in the disaster manual, many people

self-evacuated, using their own cars if they were

lucky enough to have some fuel left. This created

an enormous traffic jam on the escape route and

delayed the whole evacuation process, leaving the

population significantly distressed.

46 Author’s translation.

47 Author’s translation.

48 Source: NSC (http://www.nsc.go.jp/senmon/shidai/

sisetubo/sisetubo019/ssiryo5.pdf). (in Japanese)

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STUDY 05/2013 2 7IDDRI

Evacuation without information The field research also found that evacuees had

not been informed on the severity of the acci-

dent or the eventual radiation risk at the time of

evacuation. Even when residents were ordered to

evacuate by the municipal authorities, they were

not told how long the displacement was going to

last or what was happening at the nuclear power

station, let alone what the radiation risk would be.

As a result, many residents left without any extra

clothes, food or money, thinking that it would be

a matter of three or four days before they could

go back home. According to the NAIIC report,

only 20% of the residents in Futaba and Naraha

towns, both of which host nuclear power plants,

knew about the accident on the first day (NAIIC,

2012: p.52). The remaining 80% of residents learnt

about the accident only on the following day when

the evacuation order was finally issued by the

municipalities, twelve hours after the first evacua-

tion order issued by the government. The same

report revealed that only 10% of the residents were

aware of the first evacuation order issued by the

government.

The interviews with evacuees and municipali-

ties confirmed that the information on radia-

tion risk was not communicated to them by the

central and prefectural governments, despite the

fact that this (albeit incomplete) information had

been in authorities’ possession from the outset of

the crisis. The Japanese government had invested

a total of €130 million in developing the System

for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose

Information (SPEEDI) since the 1980s (Asahi

Shimbun Special Reporting Unit, 2012: p.21; Mat-

suoka, 2012: p.130). The system is designed to

predict the likely pathway of radioactive materi-

als emitted from a damaged nuclear power plant

and carried by winds and rains, by calculating

the weather and geographical conditions of the

concerned area. After the accident, it was dis-

covered that the Ministry of Education, Culture,

Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) was ac-

tively utilising the SPEEDI from the first day of

the accident to predict the pathway of radiation

leaks from the crippled station. This information

had even been communicated to the US army as

early as 14 March 2011, three days after the ac-

cident, through the Japanese Ministry of Foreign

Affairs upon a specific request made by the US

government (Matsuoka, 2012: p.130). Further-

more, this information was also transmitted to

the prefectural government of Fukushima as ear-

ly as 12 March 2011 via 86 e-mails sent by MEXT’s

Nuclear Safety Technology Centre. However, the

Fukushima Prefecture not only failed to inform

the concerned municipalities but also deleted

most of these e-mails.49 When interrogated as to

why this SPEEDI information had been deleted,

the Fukushima Prefecture explained that ‘these

e-mails contained attachment files that were too

heavy for our system to deal with’. When the gov-

ernment was interrogated as to why the informa-

tion from SPEEDI was not made public in a timely

manner, Special Advisor to the then Prime Minis-

ter Goshi Hosono explained that it was in order to

‘avoid panic among the population’.50

While the SPEEDI information was kept from

the public, MEXT dispatched a radiation monitor-

ing team to Namie town, which lay in the radioac-

tive pathway predicted by SPEEDI, as early as 15

March 2011 (Asahi Shimbun Special Reporting

Unit, 2012: pp.61-62). There, the team measured

a radiation dose rate as high as 330 microsieverts

(μSv) per hour (see Box 1).51 Namie town was situ-

ated outside of the official evacuation zone (31 km

north west of the nuclear station) and thus all the

residents were still living in the town. Information

on this high radiation dose rate was not communi-

cated to the Namie administration or the residents

and was made public only on the MEXT website

the following day: a point was indicated on a blank

map with no name shown for the place where this

dose rate had been detected. In the meantime,

the government spokesman repeated a televised

message that ‘this radiation dosage poses no

49 The newspaper Tokyo Shimbun, ‘Kakusan yosoku: fuku- shima-ken ga sakujo syazai’ (Author’s translation:

The Fukushima Prefecture apologizes for deleting the

SPEEDI information’, 21 April 2012.

50 Asahi Shimbun Special Reporting Unit, 2012: p.76;

Joint Government/TEPCO Press Conference held on 2

May 2011 (http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/genpatsujiko/pdf/

godokaiken_110502.pdf). (in Japanese)

51 The newspaper, Tokyo Shimbun, ‘SPEEDI information used by the government prior to being made public’, 12

June 2012; Asahi Shimbun Special Reporting Unit, 2012.

Box 1. Basic information on air radiation dose levels

m Airborne radiation can be measured by a Geiger counter, which detects particles of ionising radiation.

m 1 millisievert (mSv) per year is the reference dose level in normal exposure situations, recommended by International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP). It is the dose limit for artificial radiation exposure (thus excluding natural radiation exposure) set for the public, excluding medical and occupational exposures.

m 1 mSv/year can be calculated on average as 0.11 microsievert (μSv)/ hour.

m 0.001 Sv = 1 mSv = 1,000 μSv m The average air radiation dose rate in Fukushima Prefecture before the

accident was 0.038 μSv/hour.6

STUDY 05/20132 8 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

immediate risk to human health52’ (Asahi Shimbun

Special Reporting Unit, 2012: p.54). Consequently,

many evacuees were unnecessarily exposed to

high levels of radiation during the initial phase of

the evacuation, especially those who fled to the

north-west of the station. This zone was in fact the

pathway of the radiation clouds that SPEEDI had

already predicted, but such information had not

been shared with those concerned. The SPEEDI

information was finally released to the public on

23 March 2011, twelve days after the accident, and

additional evacuation orders for residents living in

the area with high radiation levels were not issued

until 22 April 2011, one month after the public re-

lease. As the NAIIC report states: ‘Some residents

were evacuated to areas with high radiation lev-

els and were then neglected, receiving no further

evacuation orders until April’ (NAIIC, 2012: p.19),

and by acting in this way, ‘the government effec-

tively abandoned their responsibility for public

safety’ (Ibid, p.38).

Emergency response measures against radiation exposure In addition to the lack of information on the radia-

tion risk, other emergency measures implemented

by the authorities came under criticism in the wake

of the disaster. These measures involved, in parti-

cular, the emergency medical care aimed at redu-

cing the health effects of radiation exposure. The

final report by the Investigation Committee on the

Fukushima Accident commissioned by the Cabinet

Office examined some of these measures in detail,

notably the full-body screening procedure53 for

decontamination and the administration of stable

iodine tablets (ICANPS, 2011: pp.353-361).

Prior to the accident, the Fukushima Prefec-

ture had established an external contamination

screening procedure for residents, whereby those

exposed to high radiation levels would receive de-

contamination treatment in case of an accident.

In the procedure, the threshold level triggering

this treatment was set at 40 Bq/cm2 (equivalent

to 13,000 cpm).54 Two days after the accident,

the prefectural government decided to raise this

52 Author’s translation.

53 The screening procedure involves measuring the level of

radioactive contamination on a person’s outer body by

placing dose measurement equipment over the body’s

surface. The medical team then is able to determine

whether or not a person has been contaminated by radi-

oactivity and thus needs to be decontaminated.

54 The becquerel (Bq) is a unit of radioactivity. 1 Bq rep-

resents the amount of radioactive material that will

undergo one nucleus decay per second. Counts per min-

ute (cpm) is a measure of the detection rate of ionisation

events due to radioactivity.

screening level to 100,000 cpm: eight times higher

than the pre-accident level. The Nuclear Safety

Commission of Japan (NSC), although it had ini-

tially expressed some concerns, finally endorsed

this threshold level on 19 March 2011. As a result,

full-body decontamination procedures, including

removal of contaminated clothes, showers and

other preventive measures such as administration

of iodine tablets, were not systematically applied

to people whose external contamination level read

below 100,000 cpm.

On 16 March 2011, the NSC recommended the

administration of stable iodine tablets for those

residents still inside the restricted zone within a

20 km radius from the crippled power station. In

line with the Basic Disaster Prevention Plan, all the

concerned municipalities had a sufficient stock of

stable iodine tablets for the residents in case of

an accident. However, the Fukushima prefectural

government did not communicate the NSC’s in-

struction to the concerned municipalities since it

had already confirmed that everybody had evacu-

ated and that nobody remained in the area (infor-

mation that was not correct according to our inter-

views with evacuees). The ICANPS interim report

published in December 2011 presents the case of

Miharu town, situated 50 km from the crippled

nuclear station. Assuming a high level of exposure

to radiation, the town decided on its own initia-

tive to advise residents to take stable iodine tab-

lets. When Fukushima Prefecture was informed of

this decision, it issued an order to the Miharu town

officials to suspend the distribution and recall the

tablets on the grounds that no such instruction

had yet been given by the central government. Dis-

regarding this instruction, the Miharu municipal-

ity decided to go ahead and distribute the iodine

tablets to the residents. As a result, apart from Mi-

haru town, no evacuees or other concerned popu-

lations in Fukushima took the stable iodine tablets

during the disaster due to absence of instructions

from the central and prefectural governments.

These examples show that the authorities did

not properly follow the emergency procedures that

were inscribed in their contingency manuals and

hence failed to provide a maximum protection to

the population against radiation exposures. These

incidents led the population to lose trust in the

handling of central and prefectural governments

in effectively mitigating the effects of the accident

and doing their best to protect their citizens.

4.3. Perception of risk

Prior to the accident, both evacuees and munici-

palities believed that the nuclear power station

was extremely safe and that a severe accident was

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 2 9IDDRI

almost impossible. The following section explores

the circumstances that existed in these commu-

nities before the accident and analyses how

this perception of nuclear risk heightened their

vulnerability when faced with an actual disaster.

Changes in the risk perception of nuclear energy

among both the evacuees and the general public

are also closely examined in order to demonstrate

the immediate and profound impact that the acci-

dent produced on Japanese society.

The myth of ‘absolute safety’ During the interviews, most of the evacuees

pointed out the myth of ‘absolute safety’ that had

underpinned their confidence in nuclear power

stations prior to the accident. During our field

survey, the majority of interviewees said that they

had believed that the nuclear stations were absolu-

tely safe. Most interestingly, a couple of evacuees

responded that they had previously never given

thought to the nuclear power plant as it had been

built long before their birth and they took its exis-

tence for granted. An evacuee from Naraha town

recalls:

TEPCO used to tell us that its nuclear power

plant was the safest in the world and that the oc-

currence of an accident was impossible. We were

all brainwashed by them…

As another evacuee from Futaba town

remembers:

Every year TEPCO organised a town festival

through which they carried out their informa-

tion campaign, telling the residents that the nu-

clear power station was absolutely safe. I won-

dered, if it was so safe, why do they have to come

every year to tell us the same thing? TEPCO also

transferred 10,000 yen (€100) to all the house-

holds in town every year [as a sign of apprecia-

tion for hosting its nuclear facilities]. When I

think of it now, why did they regularly send us

money if their station was so safe and there was

nothing to feel guilty about?

Although few in number, there were also evacu-

ees who had been sceptical about this myth. These

evacuees are mainly people who had worked on

site for TEPCO or those who, as members of their

Local Nuclear Resident Committee, had been in

regular contact with TEPCO and the state nuclear

regulatory agencies.55 Those who were connected

55 This committee is composed of residents and members

of the town assembly to represent the residents’ inter-

ests in matters concerning the nuclear power plant. It

had regular contacts with the plant operator, TEPCO,

and the nuclear regulatory agencies.

in some way with the nuclear facility knew that the

nuclear power stations were not failsafe, but they

did not share their opinion with others at the time

as it was considered as taboo for them to question

the safety of nuclear installations. Their ultimate

interest was to maintain the presence of the nu-

clear power plant on account of the benefits that

it brought to their community, and questioning its

safety was regarded as compromising this mutual

interest (see the section below ‘Nuclear-dependant

communities’).

Since the introduction of nuclear energy in 1955,

the myth of ‘absolute safety’ – according to which

a severe nuclear accident could never occur in Ja-

pan – has been nurtured by nuclear advocates in

industry, government and academia, initially in

order to convince rural communities to accept the

installation of nuclear power stations and later to

gain the population’s continuing support. Accord-

ing to Yoichi Funabashi and Kay Kitazawa, who are

the main authors of the report of the Independent

Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Nu-

clear Accident (IIC) established by the Rebuild Ja-

pan Initiative Foundation, this myth was regarded

as necessary by nuclear proponents in order to

overcome the general public’s strong opposition

to nuclear power, an aversion that had its roots in

the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

(Funabashi and Kitazawa, 2012: p.14). The authors

explain that the disaster risk in the nuclear energy

sector had been deliberately downplayed by these

interest groups over the years. As time passed, the

myth became ingrained in the thinking of nuclear

regulators and plant operators, who also finally

came to believe that an accident was impossible

(IIC, 2012: p.298). The myth went as far as to mis-

construe and distort common-sense logic. The IIC

report describes the myth as ‘the notion of safety

where questioning is forbidden and logic is for-

mulated in such a way as to preserve an already

established idea’.56

At a symposium organised by Waseda Univer-

sity in March 2012, Professor Shunichi Murooka

of Waseda University presented an interesting ex-

ample to illustrate how this myth functioned prior

to the disaster.57 He explained that, in the wake of

the Chernobyl accident, many nuclear facilities in

Europe installed vent filters in order to avoid pol-

luting the air with highly radioactive materials in

56 P.324; author’s translation.

57 Presentation made by Professor Shunichi Morooka

(Waseda University) at the Symposium on ‘One Year

after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukush-

ima Nuclear Disaster: The Cause, Impact, Countermeas-

ure and Reconstruction from a Complex Mega Crisis’,

held at Waseda University on 8 March 2012.

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

the event of a severe accident. In Japan, however,

the authorities and the nuclear operator consid-

ered that, if they fitted such filters, this would send

out a message to the public that a severe accident

might indeed happen one day and they therefore

decided against this precautionary measure. Ac-

cording to Professor Murooka, had these vent fil-

ters been installed, the Fukushima accident would

not have emitted as much radioactive material in

the air as it did. The same logic governed the or-

ganisation of disaster drills for residents. When Ni-

gata Prefecture, host to one of the nuclear power

plants, planned to conduct nuclear accident drills

for an earthquake scenario in 2010, the former Nu-

clear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), which

reported to METI, advised that such drills would

cause ‘unnecessary anxiety and misunderstand-

ing’ among residents and thus suggested that they

should not be implemented (Funabashi and Ki-

tazawa, 2012: p.14). In Futaba and Naraha towns,

disaster drills were conducted on a minimal scale

with a minor incident scenario in which only those

residents within the immediate vicinity of the

power station were to be evacuated. In the logic of

the safety myth, disaster preparation in itself had

become a source of contradiction: if the nuclear

power stations are so safe, why prepare the resi-

dents for an accident that would never happen? As

a result, the local population was not sufficiently

prepared for a disaster and eventual evacuation

and, prior to the accident, their risk perception

of nuclear power plants remained very low or, in

some cases, non-existent.

The safety myth shattered after the disaster All the evacuees interviewed, except a few of those

who were employed directly by the nuclear power

plants, said that they had completely lost confi-

dence in the safety of nuclear power plants and

wanted their towns to abandon nuclear energy.

This tendency is also observed within the general

public. Opinion polls taken prior to the accident

showed that the majority of the Japanese popu-

lation were in favour of stepping up the nuclear

share of the energy mix. In the 2009 census

conducted by the Cabinet Office, close to 60%

of the respondents were in favour of promoting

nuclear energy and another 20% were for main-

taining the current nuclear energy production.58

In total, almost 80% of the respondents approved

of nuclear energy in 2009. However, in June 2011,

three months after the accident, the opinion poll

conducted by the Nippon Housou Kyoukai (NHK),

Japan’s national public broadcasting organisation,

58 The survey result available in Japanese at: http://

www8.cao.go.jp/survey/tokubetu/h21/h21-genshi.pdf

revealed a complete turn-around with those in

favour of nuclear energy falling sharply to 28%,

while the proportion of those preferring a reduc-

tion or halt of nuclear energy rose to 66%.59 One

year after the accident, in March 2012, the same

opinion poll found 71% were in favour of phasing

out and abandoning nuclear energy, while only

23% were in favour of promoting or maintai-

ning nuclear energy.60 Figure 6 below summa-

rises these results and shows a reversal in public

opinion toward nuclear energy in the wake of the

Fukushima disaster.

Among the nuclear evacuees, this U-turn is even

more pronounced. According to the survey con-

ducted by Professor Akira Imai from Fukushima

University in February 2012, the opposition to

nuclear energy among the Fukushima evacuees

rose to 82% (Imai, 2012a: p.33). Considering that

an absolute majority of the local population sup-

ported the nuclear installation prior to the disas-

ter (Kainuma, 2011), a fact also confirmed by our

interviews, the change of opinion is most striking

among the evacuees from those municipalities

hosting the nuclear power plants. During the inter-

views, many voiced strong opposition to restarting

the nuclear power stations (all the stations were

in temporary shut-down for stress tests at the time

of the interviews) and to nuclear energy in gen-

eral, stating that there was no such thing as 100%

safe nuclear power generation. At the same time,

they also emphasised that the specific situations

of the municipalities hosting nuclear power plants

should be taken into account for any decision on

whether or not to abandon nuclear energy. Being

acutely aware of the benefits that a nuclear power

plant also brings to a town in terms of job creation

and economic prosperity (see the section ‘Nuclear-

dependant communities’), they did not wish to

impose their opinion in favour of ceasing nuclear

activities on the other hosting communities.

4.4. Prospects of return

The prospect of return for nuclear evacuees

remained uncertain one year after the disaster. The

following sub-section analyses the situation facing

nuclear evacuees with respect to their return and

explores why the evacuees remain ambivalent on

this question.

59 The survey result available in Japanese at: http://

www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/summar y/yoron/social/

pdf/110709.pdf

60 The survey result available in Japanese at: http://www.

nhk.or.jp/bunken/summary/yoron/social/pdf/120401.

pdf

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 3 1IDDRI

The question of return is highly politicised Unlike the return of tsunami evacuees, the return

of nuclear evacuees has become a highly politi-

cised issue one year on from the disaster. In the

aftermath of the Fukushima accident, as early

as 19 April 2011, the government raised the dose

limit for public exposure to radiation from 1 mSv/

year to 20 mSv/year.61 Accordingly, the authori-

ties, including the Fukushima prefectural govern-

ment and several affected municipalities, began

to emphasise that it was safe to return and live

in areas with an annual radiation dose of less

than 20 mSv. Policy priorities have thus focused

on decontamination operations to ‘cleanse’ the

affected communities of radiation and on the early

return of evacuees. On the other hand, our field

research found that the majority of evacuees are

still anxious about the radioactive contamina-

tion of their houses and communities and remain

highly sceptical about the effectiveness of deconta-

mination operations. They are thus still undecided

about their return.

In March 2012, one year on from the accident,

the government proposed a new plan to reorgan-

ise the evacuation zone into three categories de-

pending on the air radiation doses measured.62

The first area, which has an air radiation dose of

less than 20 mSv/year, is designated for intensive

61 The reference dose for artificial irradiation for the pub-

lic, excluding medical and occupational exposures,

in ‘regular exposure situations’ defined by Interna-

tional Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)

is 1 mSv/year (ICRP, 2007). The Japanese government

refers to the ICRP’s recommendation on the reference

dose fixed for ‘existing radiation exposure conditions’,

applied to occupational exposure situations and residual

exposure situations after a nuclear reactor accident, to

justify its decision to raise the dose limit to 20 mSv/year.

The reference dose for ‘existing radiation exposure con-

ditions’ is between 1–20 mSv/year according to ICRP.

62 Source: METI (http://www.meti.go.jp/earthquake/

nuclear/pdf/20120330_02f.pdf).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

2005 2009 JUN 2011

OCT 2011

MAR 2012

Promotion

Status Quo

Abandon (Phase-out)

Don't know

Figure 6. Trends in public opinion on nuclear energy

Source: Cabinet Office for 2005-2009 and NHK census for 2011-2012.

decontamination operations and the early return

of evacuees. The second zone is defined as an area

with a radiation dose of between 20–50 mSv/year,

with return not deemed feasible for at least two to

three years. The third zone is the area with more

than 50 mSv/year, where the return will be diffi-

cult for at least the next five years (Table 4).

Table 4. The government’s proposal on the reorganisation of the evacuation zone

Area Name Threshold Radiation Dose

(airborne)

Timing of Return

1 Areas for which evacuation orders

are ready to be lifted

Less than 20 mSv/ year

Intensive decontamination and early return

2 Areas in which the residents are not permitted to live

Between 20-50 mSv/year

Evacuees cannot return for at least

2-3 years

3 Areas where it is expected that the residents will find

it difficult to return to for a long time

More than 50 mSv/ year

Evacuees cannot return for at least

5 years

Source: Reconstruction Agency.

Box 2. The government’s compensation scheme for nuclear evacuees

The compensation scheme for the nuclear evacuees following the reorganisa- tion of the evacuation zone was disclosed by the government in July 2012. The main elements of the scheme are as follows:

Psychological damage caused by the evacuation In addition to the reimbursement of transportation and accommodation costs related to the evacuation, TEPCO will pay 100,000 yen (€1,000) per person per month from the date of the accident until the date when the evacuation orders are lifted by the government.

Damages to fixed-assets (houses and land) As for private houses and lands located in the third zone (difficult to return to for 5 years), TEPCO will pay compensation equivalent to the pre-accident value of such assets. Those located in the first and the second zones will be compensated proportionally to the number of years the elapse until the lifting of evacuation orders for these zones.

Damages to household effects The amount of compensation varies according to the size of families. For example, a family of two adults and two children will receive between €50,000–67,000 on the basis of the newly classified areas.

Economic damages TEPCO pays an amount equivalent to the salary that an evacuee was earning prior to the accident (for a period of two years) and compensates for loss of business earnings based on the average profits that business owners were making before the accident (calculated on the previous five years for agricul- ture and forestry businesses, and three years for other business activities).

Source: METI. For further details, the following documents are available on the METI website in Japanese: http://www.meti.go.jp/earthquake/nuclear/pdf/institution.pdf; http://www.meti.go.jp/pr ess/2012/07/20120720001/20120720001-1.pdf

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Area 1: Areas to which evacuation orders are ready to be lifted

Area 2: Areas in which the residents are not permitted to live

Area 3: Areas where it is expected that the residents have difficulties in returning for a long time

Restricted Area Deliberate Evacuation Area

Map 5. Reorganisation of the evacuation zone (as from August 2012)

Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 3 3IDDRI

However, this proposal raised many concerns

among the affected communities, obliging the

government to hold consultations with each mu-

nicipality. In August 2012, only 5 out of 11 affected

towns had officially adopted the plan, while the

other 6 were still in consultation and undecided.63

According to the interviews, their main cause for

concern was that the proposal splits towns into

three areas each benefiting from different levels

of financial assistance (Box 2), which is likely to

create jealousies among the residents and threat-

en the cohesiveness of the community. Secondly,

it creates patches of land to which residents can

return while the rest remain restricted access are-

as (Map 5). During the interviews, several evacu-

ees questioned the feasibility of returning to such

areas if vital social infrastructures such as clinics,

schools and shops are located in the second or the

third zone and thus simply not accessible. Third-

ly, many evacuees, especially those with small

children, are deeply anxious about radiation ef-

fects if they return. They remain sceptical of the

new safety standard of ‘less than 20 mSv/year’,

despite the government’s reassurances.

Since the redefinition of the evacuation zone,

the government, Fukushima Prefecture and sev-

eral affected municipalities have mobilised to

encourage evacuees to return to the localities

classified as Area 1, which has annual air radia-

tion dose below 20 mSv. For the municipal gov-

ernments, the question of return is a matter of

their own survival: if the residents do not return,

the town will disintegrate and ultimately disap-

pear from the map, thus putting their existence

and identity into jeopardy. With slogans such as

‘Without the revitalisation of Fukushima, there

is no revitalisation of Japan’64 and ‘Don’t give up

Fukushima!’, the authorities are setting priority

on the ‘normalisation’ of the Fukushima disaster

situation and urging the evacuees to return and

reconstruct their lives. The majority of evacuees,

however, are still fearful about the risks of radia-

tion. One evacuee from Naraha town expressed

his frustration:

The government forced us to evacuate in the

first place. Now it’s trying to force us to return

without much information. When it comes

to the issue of return, I feel as if we will do it

at our own risk. We don’t know whether the

63 Minamisoma, Iitate, Tamura, Kawauchi and Naraha

have accepted the government’s proposal. Tomioka,

Okuma, Futaba, Namie, Katsurao and Kawamata have

not yet made a decision.

64 Prime Minister’s speech at a press conference on 2 Sep-

tember 2011 available in Japanese at: http://www.kantei.

go.jp/jp/noda/statement/2011/0902kaiken.html.

government will compensate the medical fees

when we get sick [from radiation effects] after

returning.

The authorities’ emphasis on return is thus

making the evacuee communities mistrustful of

the public authorities and becoming a source of

grievances. Meanwhile, the municipalities are

confronted with the extremely difficult task of

making the right choice for a future that both en-

sures the evacuees’ best interests and maintains

their community’s cohesiveness and identity.

The nuclear evacuees’ unwillingness to return During the field research, the majority of evacuees

said either that they wished to return but knew this

would not be possible, or simply that they did not

wish to return. This clearly shows the reality that

nuclear evacuees are facing on the ground. Most

express a wish to return, which in fact means that

they will not probably return considering the situa-

tion, but they do not want to state this outright. In

the field interviews, the DEVAST research team

often felt that the evacuees were hesitant to give a

clear response to the question of return, as return

is closely linked to their community’s cohesive-

ness and survival; any expression of unwillingness

to return could be seen as lacking solidarity and

betraying their community. The issue of return,

therefore, has become an almost taboo subject and

a fault line dividing the evacuee communities.

Professor Akira Imai from Fukushima University

conducted a panel survey among the nuclear evac-

uees in which same questions were asked to same

interviewees over time. He then analysed how

their opinions had evolved. The first survey was

conducted three months after the accident in June

2011, the second six months after in September

2011 and the third twelve months after in February

2012 (Imai, 2011a; 2011c; 2012a). The survey find-

ings show that the willingness to return decreases

with the passage of time and an increasingly real-

istic picture of the hometown situation (Figure 7).

The evacuees who expressed their wish to return

in June 2011 represented 61.7%, whereas in the lat-

est survey conducted in February 2012 this figure

had dropped to only 36.1%. In addition, a clear di-

vision of opinion was observed between the gen-

erations under the age of fifty and the over-sixties

(Figure 8). According to a resident survey con-

ducted by Naraha town in February 2012, the pro-

portion of evacuees aged between twenty and fifty

who expressed a willingness to return was around

34%, while more than half of those aged over sixty

declared their wish to return (Takaki, 2012). In the

same survey, over half of the respondents (56%)

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

stated that a decrease in the radiation level was a

condition of their return, with their second biggest

concern being the rehabilitation of basic social in-

frastructure (29.7%). During our own interviews,

evacuees also raised the issues of employment

prospects and the decontamination of their houses

as conditions of their return. But the phrase that

we heard repeatedly in all the municipalities is:

‘people under sixty years old will probably not re-

turn as they are afraid of the radiation effects on

their children’. If this turns out to be the case, the

return of the evacuees aged over sixty will also

pose enormous challenges. Several of those inter-

viewed raised the following question: ‘if there are

no shops open in town, no doctors and nurses in

the clinics and no helpers in elderly homes, how

can we return and rebuild our lives?’. The prospect

of return therefore remains uncertain and contin-

ues to cause a great deal of psychological stress for

the evacuees.

The government’s contradictory policies for return During the interviews, the municipal workers

and evacuees from the towns hosting the nuclear

power plants often expressed frustration at the

contradictory policies proposed by the govern-

ment with regard to return. In March 2012, when

the government proposed a reorganisation of the

evacuation zones, it also put forward a plan to

set up an interim storage facility for the contami-

nated soil collected during the decontamination

operations around the two nuclear power plants

in Fukushima Prefecture. To this end, it officially

requested the four hosting communities65 to accept

the plan. However, both the municipalities and the

evacuees criticised this plan as being at odds with

the government’s policy for decontamination and

65 Futaba, Okuma, Tomioka and Naraha towns.

the early return of evacuees. They fear that if they

accept the installation of an interim storage faci-

lity, they will not be able to return to the commu-

nity given that highly irradiated soil will be stored

in the vicinity.

The field interviews clearly evidenced a situa-

tion of ‘passing the buck’ between the central and

municipal governments on the issue of return.

Municipal governments sometimes asked the cen-

tral authority to make a decision on their return

to ensure that the final responsibility for assisting

their returning and for assuring the welfare of the

returning communities would remain with the

central government. On the other hand, the cen-

tral government insists that it is up to each munici-

pality whether or not to accept the plan for the re-

organisation of the evacuation zone. In reality, the

municipalities and evacuees have had little choice

but to accept the plan as no other alternatives are

proposed by the government. As things stand, nei-

ther the government nor the municipality have

forced evacuees to return and thus neither party is

ultimately responsible for the future of returnees.

Decontamination or contamination- transfer? Evacuees refer to the decontamination of their

community as a key condition for their return.

Yet, during our field survey, most of them were

profoundly sceptical as to its effectiveness. Imai’s

survey revealed that 80% of the evacuees were

unconvinced by the results of the authorities’

decontamination operations since these are

proving much less efficient than initially expected

(Imai, 2012a). The standard decontamination

operation involves removing topsoil, cutting away

undergrowth and pressure washing roof tiles and

asphalt roads.66 In reality, the Fukushima evacuees

66 Source: Ministry of Environment (http://josen.env.

go.jp/material/download/pdf/josen.pdf).

0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 80,0% 100,0% 120,0%

3 months after

6 months after

12 months after

Wish to return Wish to return if possible Do not wish to return so much Do not wish to return Undecided Others

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

20s

30s

40s

50s

60s

Over 70s

Total

Wish to Return Do not wish to return Do not know

Figure 7. Changes in willingness to return Figure 8. Willingness to return according to age

Source: Akira Imai, The Third Resident Survery, 2012. Source: Naraha town’s resident survey in February 2012.

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 3 5IDDRI

and residents have discovered, using their own

Geiger counters, that if it rained or snowed after

the operation, the radiation level went up again.67

The survey conducted in Fukushima City by the

international NGO, Friends of the Earth, showed

that, after a decontamination operation, the radia-

tion level had decreased by only 6.7% on average

at 1 m above the ground (Yamauchi, 2011). Another

problem is that the removed contaminated topsoil

is put into plastic bags and stockpiled next to the

site or inside the city limits, given that so far no

specialised storage facility has been designated to

stock the contaminated soil satisfactorily. As long

as the removed soil is left on site, radiation levels

in the area are not likely to decrease to any great

extent. Furthermore, when roads and roofs are

cleaned with water, the contaminated water ends

up in the sewers or is absorbed into the surroun-

ding fields and remains radioactive. This means

that the decontamination operation is merely

transferring radioactive materials from one place

to another. Once materials become contaminated,

their radioactivity cannot be eliminated simply

by ‘cleansing’. One evacuee from Futaba town

expressed his frustration as follows:

There are many farmers in our town. When

we return, if we cannot eat what we grow on our

farms and we cannot drink the water because it

comes from the contaminated river, how are we

going to live?

Another evacuee also from Futaba town added:

There are many radiation hot spots in individ-

ual houses as well. The authorities say ‘it’s safe

to live in your area because the radiation level is

OK but please don’t get close to the four corners

of your house [where the rain water drops from

the gutter]’. When I actually went to my house

and measured the radiation level, I was shocked

to detect a very high radiation level around the

gutters and the corners of window frames. It is

impossible to live in a house that has hot spots in

different places.

In addition, radioactivity is often concentrated

in the vegetation and soil of nearby hills, moun-

tains and river banks. Many evacuees remarked

that decontaminating the mountains was an al-

most impossible task. As the affected communi-

ties are often in a rural setting surrounded by hills

and mountains, the evacuees are highly sceptical

about the effectiveness of the decontamination op-

erations and the prospects of their eventual return.

In this context, some evacuees have started to

67 Information obtained from the evacuees and the resi-

dents of Fukushima City during our interviews.

question whether it is useful for the government to

pursue its decontamination policy, which receives

a large slice of the reconstruction budget.

4.5. Post-disaster challenges

This sub-section presents the major challenges

facing the evacuees, the residents of Fukushima

Prefecture, the affected municipalities, the govern-

ment and the Japanese population at large one

year after the Fukushima accident.

Discrimination towards the ‘contaminated’ Some evacuees that we interviewed complained

that they had suffered from discrimination both

during their displacement and in their place of

refuge. In the early stages of the crisis, the evacuees

from Fukushima Prefecture were considered as

‘contaminated’ by the rest of the population. They

often met with different forms of discrimination

and, in some cases, were openly avoided by the

public. As Japanese vehicle number plates indicate

the place of registration, evacuees who fled by

car were easily identifiable. A couple of evacuees

mentioned that the cars with a Fukushima number

plate were banned from using certain roads

or entering certain localities. An evacuee from

Okuma town recounted one of her experiences:

When I evacuated to Niigata Prefecture

[200 km west of the Fukushima Daiichi plant], I

was really discriminated against… For example,

when I went to a public bath to take a shower,

there was a hand-written notice saying ‘Entry

prohibited to persons from Fukushima’. I was

really shocked. Actually, I experienced the same

thing even in Aizu region [the western part of

Fukushima Prefecture; 100 km from the nuclear

station]. Although Aizu is part of Fukushima

Prefecture, I saw a notice saying that the place

is reserved for non-Fukushima people. Moreover,

every time I parked my car in a supermarket car

park, when I came back to my car, there were no

cars parked around mine. In fact, because of my

number plate, everybody could see that I came

from the area included in the evacuation zone.

So no one wanted to park their car close to mine.

Some evacuees also mentioned that their chil-

dren were often bullied at school in the towns

where they had taken refuge: they are seen as ‘con-

taminated’ or called ‘Mr/Miss Fukushima’ by other

pupils. As the crippled nuclear power station and

the Prefecture share the same name, ‘Fukushima’,

the accident has been amalgamated with the Pre-

fecture and the entire Fukushima region is now

viewed as ‘contaminated’ or ‘condemned’. The ad-

ditional traumatism of discrimination is one of the

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

key aspects that differentiates the nuclear evacua-

tion from the displacement caused by the tsunami.

The widespread image of Fukushima as ‘contami-

nated’ and the self-image of nuclear evacuees as

irradiated and discriminated against will have a

lasting effect in the minds of the evacuees and the

rest of the population.

Nuclear-dependent communities When explaining the pre-accident context, the

municipal workers and evacuees from the towns

that host the nuclear power plants often referred

to the ‘special relationship’ they had enjoyed with

the plant operator, TEPCO. They describe it as a

relationship of ‘co-existence and mutual pros-

perity’. The municipal officers from both Futaba

and Naraha towns confessed that it was difficult

to criticise TEPCO even after the accident, as

they were only too aware of TEPCO’s substan-

tial contribution to the prosperity of their towns.

Hiroshi Kainuma explains, in his book entitled

Theory of Fukushima: How was the ‘Nuclear

Village’ Formed?,68 the process whereby a town

ends up becoming utterly dependent on the exis-

tence of a nuclear power plant for its economic

survival. Whenever a nuclear installation plan is

proposed, various upstream financial incentives

are generally offered by the government and the

nuclear operator so as to convince local residents

to support the plan. The sites targeted for these

nuclear facilities were often remote and sparsely

populated regions, largely impoverished and with

little industrial fabric. Traditionally, the men in

such localities have to move to bigger towns and

cities to find employment, leaving their wives

and children behind. However, when a nuclear

plant arrives and creates jobs for a hefty share

of a town’s population69 and the local govern-

ment receives large amounts of tax and subsi-

dies, the town’s economy flourishes and the

presence of nuclear industry becomes indispen-

sable to the residents’ livelihoods. According to

Kainuma, before the arrival of a nuclear facility,

these towns were among the poorest municipa-

lities in Fukushima Prefecture. Yet, by 1977, six

years after the arrival of the Fukushima Daiichi

nuclear power station, the residents from the two

hosting towns were earning the highest salaries

in the whole prefecture, even surpassing salaries

68 Author’s translation from the Japanese title: Fukushima ron, genshiryoku mura ha naze umaretanoka?

69 From the interviews with the municipalities of Futaba

and Naraha. In addition to offering direct employment,

TEPCO also generated a great deal of indirect employ-

ment in these towns, such as restaurants for the plant

workers and hotels for the technicians who came peri-

odically to maintain the nuclear reactors.

in Fukushima City, the prefecture’s capital city

(Kainuma, 2011: pp.130-141). One evacuee from

Futaba town recalls:

Thanks to the nuclear power station, our men

did not have to look for a job away from the

town. Everybody’s life improved and we became

the richest in all Fukushima Prefecture. As a re-

sult, no industry developed in the town except

agriculture. When the station was installed dur-

ing the 1970s, I was earning 52,000 yen (€520)

per month at the agricultural cooperative. If

you worked with TEPCO during that period, you

earned 120,000 yen (€1,200), more than double

your salary!

But as the nuclear facility ages, it brings dimin-

ishing financial revenues to the town70 (IIC, 2012:

pp.329-330). Accustomed to a certain level of fis-

cal expenditure, these towns then begin to show

budget deficits as the income from the nuclear fa-

cility declines. For this reason, the municipalities

often ask the government to install more nuclear

facilities in their town in order to offset the short-

fall. The report from the Independent Investiga-

tion Commission71 calls it the ‘nuclear addiction’

of the host communities (IIC, 2012: p.330). During

one interview, a municipal employee of Futaba

town murmured:

TEPCO was good for us. Most of us benefited

from them in one way or another. I want to de-

nounce them on account of the accident, but I

also feel grateful to them for having given us a

prosperous life. It’s complicated. You know, be-

fore the accident, all the high school graduates

in Futaba town found jobs in town thanks to the

nuclear power plant. We had a privileged life.

During the interviews, many evacuees from

these communities voiced concerns about their

job prospects when they eventually return to their

hometowns. Since the government announced the

decommissioning of the four damaged reactors in

Fukushima Daiichi power plant, they are worried

that they will not be able to return to their former

jobs or find any other employment, given that

most of the local jobs were connected with the nu-

clear industry. In addition to problem of radioac-

tive contamination, the uncertainty of job oppor-

tunities further complicates the evacuees’ decision

to return.

70 The revenue from a fixed property tax paid by the

nuclear plant operator to the host community dimin-

ishes every year due to the depreciation of assets.

71 The independent investigation panel on the Fukushima

accident set up by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Founda-

tion.

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Controversy on the health risks of low-dose radiation exposure72 On 19 April 2011, the Ministry of Education,

Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)

set an interim reference radiation dose rate of

1–20 mSv/year for schools in the Fukushima

Prefecture, whereas the normal reference dose

rate for public exposure to radiation73 remained

at 1 mSv/year in other parts of Japan (ICPR,

2007).74 Since taking this decision, the authorities

have been using the annual dose rate of 20 mSv

(which is the upper limit of the 1–20mSv interim

dose rate) as the threshold value to mark out the

evacuation zones and declare an area safe for

return (see section 4.4. Prospects of return). To

justify this choice, the Japanese government refers

to the ICRP’s recommendation on the reference

dose rate for ‘existing radiation exposure condi-

tions’ including occupational exposure situations

and residual exposure situations after a nuclear

accident, which should be limited to between 1

and 20 mSv/year.75 The field interviews with the

Fukushima evacuees, residents and local NGOs

suggest that there are three main controversies on

this governmental decision.

First, the 20 mSv limit is not only applied to

adults but also to children, who are generally con-

sidered to be more sensitive to radiation effects

than adults.76 According to the ICRP recommen-

dation, 1–20 mSv/year is also the reference dose

for occupational radiation exposure applied to

workers at nuclear facilities or radiological depart-

ments in hospitals (ICRP, 2007). This means that

nuclear power plant workers and children in Fuku-

shima are placed under the same dose limit. Fur-

thermore, MEXT established the threshold dose

limit per hour for children to play in the school-

yard at 3.8 μSv/hour.77 However, this dose limit

was calculated from 20 mSv/year on the assump-

tion that children spend only eight hours outside

per day. If the average hourly rate is calculated

72 Low-dose radiation exposure means an exposure situa-

tion under the dose of 100 mSv.

73 Here ‘radiation’ means artificial radiation excluding nat-

ural background radiation.

74 Source: MEXT (http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hou-

dou/23/04/1305174.htm).

75 http://www.irsn.fr/EN/Research/publications-docu-

mentation/Scientific-books/Documents/CIPR_103.pdf.

76 Koide refers to the book, Radiation and Human Health, published in 1981 and written by the late John W. Gof-

man, who was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell

Biology at University of California, Berkley. Citing this

book, Koide mentions that ‘an infant under one year old

has four times more sensitivity to radiation exposure

than an adult aged 20–30 ‘ (author’s translation).

77 Source: MEXT (http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/sai-

gaijohou/syousai/1305173.htm).

normally from the 20 mSv annual dose78, this gives

2.28 μSv/hour. Thus, the hourly dose limit fixed by

the government for Fukushima school children is

1.5 μSv higher than the average hourly rate of the

20 mSv/year threshold fixed by the same author-

ity. Compared to school children in other parts of

Japan, where the reference dose remains 1 mSv/

year, the children in Fukushima are exposed to

the radiation level which is as much as 30 times

higher.79 On 1 May 2011, Tokyo University Professor

Toshiso Kosako, a specialist on radiation safety, re-

signed his position as special advisor to the Cabinet

in protest against this ‘3.8  μSv/hour’ and ’20  mSv/

year’ limit for children in Fukushima. He explained

in his resignation statement80 that ‘it is completely

wrong to use this standard for schools’ and this

limit must ‘be used in cases of exceptional or ur-

gent circumstances (for two to three days or one to

two weeks maximum)’, emphasising that ‘it is very

rare even among the occupationally exposed per-

sons to be exposed to radiation of 20 mSv per year’.

He concluded by saying that he could not possibly

accept that this dose level be applied to babies,

infants and primary school pupils, not only from

his viewpoint as an academic but also on account

of his humanistic beliefs. Despite many criticisms

from both inside and outside Japan against this

policy, the Japanese government has not yet re-

viewed its decision, and a radiation exposure dose

of 20 mSv/year is still tolerated for the Fukushima

population including children, with no fixed time-

frame (as at September 2012).

The second controversial issue involves the au-

thorities’ dissemination of information on the

health effects of radiation exposure. Since the

decision on a new reference radiation dose, the

authorities have started information campaigns

designed to reassure the public rather than to alert

them and raise their awareness of the radiation

risk. MEXT has issued a number of information

booklets on radiation intended for the general pub-

lic and schools, in which it repeatedly emphasises

that ‘a causal relationship between radiation expo-

sure and developing cancer is not clearly proven

under the accumulative exposure dose of 100 mSv’

(see Box 3) and that ‘under the exposure dose of

100 mSv, the probability of developing a cancer

is higher from other causes such as smoking or

78 20,000 μSv (20 mSv) / 24 hours / 365 days = 2.28 μSv/

hour.

79 The regular dose limit is around 0.11μSv/hour calculat-

ing on the basis of 1m Sv/year.

80 Cf. Professor Kosako’s statement of resignation at a press

conference held in Tokyo on 29 April 2011 (http://www.

japanfocus.org/events/view/83). (in-text quotations

translated by Izumi Tanaka and the author).

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Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

insufficient consumption of vegetables’81 (MEXT,

2011a: pp.10-12). In addition, a booklet issued on

24 June 2011 clearly states that ‘there is almost no

possibility of developing thyroid cancer due to the

recent Fukushima accident’. It concludes by saying

that ‘the psychological stress caused by the anxiety

of “being irradiated” has more harmful effects to

health than radiation exposure itself and that this

stress causes many health troubles’.82 These book-

lets do refer to the hypothesis underpinning the

ICRP recommendation for radiation protection:

the probability of developing a cancer is propor-

tional to the dosage exposed, even under 100 mSv

(ICRP, 2007). However, this message is only very

briefly mentioned, usually in one sentence, and

the focus is more on reassuring the public that

there is little cancer risk for exposure to radiation

doses of under 100 mSv.

81 Author’s translation.

82 Author’s translations.

One week after the disaster, the Fukushima

Prefecture invited Professor Shunichi Yamashita

from Nagasaki University, appointing him as Ra-

diation Risk Management Advisor for Fukushima

Prefecture. He has given talks on radiation risk

in all major cities in Fukushima, reiterating that

there is absolutely no health risk from radiation

exposure under 100 mSv per year and that chil-

dren can play outside without any problem.83

However, several months later he corrected this

information stating that ‘it was rather 10 mSv/

year, not 100 mSv/year, under which there is no

health effect’.84 A similar message was dissemi-

nated by other prefectural authorities such as the

Tokyo Metropolitan Government and public re-

search institutions such as the National Institute

of Radiological Sciences.85

Thirdly, this reference dose concerns only ex-

ternal exposure to radiation and does not include

the effects of internal exposure (Box 3). In its 2007

recommendation, ICRP urges that, in the case of

emergency exposure situations, an individual’s

total exposure dose from different sources be

taken into account when developing radiation

protection measures (ICRP, 2007). People living

in Fukushima most likely consume local produce

that could be contaminated by radioactive sub-

stances. The government policy, which focuses

only on the air radiation dose and external expo-

sure, thus tends to overlook other exposure risks

and fails to fully address the radiation protection

needs of the concerned population.

According to the field interviews, this situation

occasioned a great deal of confusion and distress

among the residents and evacuees of Fukushima

Prefecture, as they no longer knew whom or what

to trust concerning the risk related to radiation

exposure. Furthermore, such circumstance cre-

ated divisions and tensions among the affected

population depending on the individual opinion

and perception of the radiation risk, as explored

below.

83 Author’s translations. Lecture on Radiation Risk organ-

ised by Fukushima City Council on 21 March 2011, available

in Japanese at: http://wwwcms.pref.fukushima.jp/pcp_

portal/PortalServlet?DISPL AY_ID=DIRECT&NEXT_

DISPLAY_ID=U000004&CONTENTS_ID=23695

84 Ibid.

85 The official statement concerning the ‘safe-

under-100 mSv’ level is quoted in many Twitter messages

and on Internet blog sites (For example, http://blog.

livedoor.jp/wisteriabook/archives/3289454.html), but

today it is untraceable on the websites of those institu-

tions consulted at the time of the writing (September

2012). The author assumes that the pages were simply

erased or made inaccessible by the institutions after they

received criticisms from members of the public.

Box 3. ICRP guidelines (ICRP 2007)

The health effects from radiation: ‘deterministic effects’ and ‘stochastic effects’ Deterministic effects occur once a threshold dose of exposure is exceeded, generally following high radiation exposure events. These effects include skin redness, cataracts, infertility and, in the worst cases, death. Stochastic effects such as cancer or heritable effects are caused by relatively low radia- tion doses. For exposure to a radiation dose of more than 100 mSv, there is a clear causal relationship established between the exposure dose and cancer rate. But for exposure under 100 mSv, this causal relationship has not yet been scientifically proven conclusively. Notwithstanding, the ICRP recom- mendation is based on a hypothesis that there is also a proportional relation- ship between exposure doses and cancer rates even under 100 mSv exposure.

The reference level* for three different exposure situations (ICRP, 2007: p.102; Holm, 2007):

Between 20–100 mSv

Emergency exposure

situations

Radiological emergency situations which require urgent action in order to avoid

undesirable consequences.

Between 1–20 mSv

Existing exposure situations

Occupational exposures in planned situations; natural background radiation (radon in

dwellings); post-accident recovery situations

Under 1 mSv Planned exposure

situations Public exposures in planned situations

* An acute dose or an annual accumulative dose.

Two types of radiation exposure: ‘internal exposure’ and ‘external exposure’ External exposure is irradiation from external radioactive sources such as airborne radioactive materials. Internal exposure is irradiation from radioac- tive sources inside the body such as ingested contaminated food and water. After the intake of radioactive materials into the body, the person is con- tinuously exposed to radiation until the radioactive source has completely decayed, a process that can take many years. The above reference dose does not include such internal exposure.

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The plight of Fukushima residents – the phenomenon of ‘self-evacuees’ In order to fully understand the grave social

consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster,

we must look at the situation in the Naka-dori

region of Fukushima. Fukushima Prefecture

comprises three regions (Maps 2 and 6): Hama-

dori on the coast, most of whose territory was

designated as evacuation zones, Naka-dori in

the middle, the political and economic centre

of the Prefecture, and Aizu located inland to the

west. In the Hama-dori region, many residents

were forced to evacuate on the government’s

orders, whereas the residents in the Naka-dori

region were reassured by the authorities that it

were safe to stay despite the elevated radiation

dose, which in some places was as high as that

of the official evacuation zones. For example, the

Onami and Watari districts of Fukushima City

have spots where radiation doses of 3.87 μSv/

hour and 10.36 μSv/hour were detected by the

residents and an NGO (Yamauchi, 2011).86 On 16

June 2011, the government began to designate

the areas identified as having a radiation dose

of more than 20 mSv/year (or 3.0 μSv/hour)87

as Specific Spots Recommended for Evacuation

(Specific Spots), and decided to provide finan-

cial assistance for the evacuation of the resi-

dents involved. However, these districts were not

finally designated as Specific Spots as the autho-

rities’ own readings showed a radiation dose

under the threshold level. Moreover, in May 2011,

MEXT disclosed information on the level of soil

contamination in Fukushima Prefecture, which

indicated that the amount of cesium-137 detected

in the soil of Fukushima City and other cities in

the Naka-dori region was more than 550 kBq/

m2 (kilobecquerels per square metre) (Kawata,

2011). This level equals the threshold contami-

nation level for the Strict Radiation Control Area

where residents were temporarily resettled after

the Chernobyl accident, fixed by the radioprotec-

tion regime of the former Soviet authorities at

the time.88

86 The newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun, ‘Higashinihon daishinsai: fukushima daiichi genpatsujiko onami dis-

trict, menteki josen ha isshin ittai jisshi ichinen senryou

saijousou no basyo mo’ (author’s translation: One year

from whole-area decontamination operation - radiation

dose increased in some places), 17 October 2012.

87 The threshold hourly radiation dose required for an area

to be designated as a Specific Spot changes depending

on the municipality, as does the method of calculating

the hourly dose from the 20 mSv/year threshold value.

The 3.0 μSv/hour is the threshold dose adapted by Date

City, Fukushima (http://www.City.date.fukushima.jp/

profile/k-kaiken/pdf/h23/20111125-shiryo01.pdf).

88 Kawata, 2011.

In this context, the residents in the Nada-dori

region, fearing the radiation effects, started to

evacuate from their homes to other parts of Ja-

pan without any government assistance.89 Many of

these self-evacuees were mothers with small chil-

dren90 who had either financial means or family

connections outside Fukushima. Moreover, those

with Internet knowledge and thus able to obtain

information other than the official announcement

made by the government and Fukushima Prefec-

ture were among the first to flee. Meanwhile, oth-

ers, due to financial or family reasons were obliged

to remain in Fukushima, living with high levels

of anxiety about the radiation risk. To cope with

these fears, many of them are trying to convince

themselves that they can trust the authorities’ as-

surance that it is safe for them and their children

to live in Fukushima as long as the radiation dose

does not exceed 20 mSv/year.91 As a result, these

‘stayers’ started to criticise self-evacuees as well

as other residents who remain sceptical of the of-

ficial reassurances, labelling them as cowardly and

selfish. As one self-evacuee from Koriyama City

explained:

The words, ‘radiation’ and ‘evacuation’, have

become a taboo in Naka-dori region. Voluntary

evacuation is considered as an escape from the

hardship that the community is trying to over-

come collectively and thus labelled as an act of

betrayal… Mothers who oblige their children to

wear masks all the time or to refuse the lunch

served at school cafeteria [as schools in Fuku-

shima purchase local produce to cook lunch] in

order to protect their children from internal ex-

posure, are often considered by other mothers as

paranoid and annoying. In this situation, many

mothers have become depressive and developed

other psychological conditions, as their level of

anxiety and the pressures from society are be-

coming too high.

This is a tragic situation for both self-evacuees

and the residents who stay on. Self-evacuees often

89 In December 2011, the government decided to provide

compensation for self-evacuees from the selected 23

cities located mainly in the Naka-dori region of Fuku-

shima. However, the scheme targeted only those who

self-evacuated between 11 March and 31 December 2011,

and was a one-off payment of 80,000 yen (€800) for an

adult and 400,000 yen (€4,000) for a child or a preg-

nant woman.

90 In culturally traditional regions such as Fukushima Pre-

fecture, it is mainly the mothers who take care of the

children and generally stay at home as housewives. It is

thus easier for them to flee with the children while their

husbands stay on and continue to work in Fukushima in

order to financially support such evacuation.

91 From the interviews with the residents and self-evacu-

ees from the Naka-dori region of Fukushima.

STUDY 05/20134 0 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Map 6. Radiation contour map of the affected region

Source: map created by Professor Yukio Hayakawa*, 11 September 2011. Professor Yukio Hayakawa is a geologist at Gunma University (http://kipuka.blog70.fc2.com).

Fukushima

Tokyo (Shinjuku)

Sendai

Koriyama

Iwate

8 μSv/h and more

* Sv/h (microsievert per hour)

Hama - Dori

Naka-Dori

Aizu

4 Sv/h and more 2 Sv/h and more 1 Sv/h and more 0.5 Sv/h and more 0.25 Sv/h and more

0.125 Sv/h and more

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 4 1IDDRI

feel isolated and abandoned in their place of ref-

uge, as their relationship with their hometown has

been cut off; they have lost friends and sometimes

their husbands if these opposed voluntary evacu-

ation and decided to stay in Fukushima. The re-

search team also learnt that self-evacuees often

evacuated during the night without telling any-

body in order to avoid uncomfortable encounters

with neighbours and friends. Once they evacuate,

it is difficult for them to return as they are stigma-

tised by the community. For those who stay, the

situation is no easier. In particular, mothers who

are worried about the radiation effects on their

children but do not have a choice of voluntary

evacuation are experiencing significant psycho-

logical distress. The resident survey conducted

in May 2012 by Fukushima City found that 34%

of the residents still wished to evacuate from the

City, with 89% of these respondents saying that

they were worried about the future health of their

children.92 Over a long run, this situation will have

devastating consequences for the welfare of the

population in the Naka-dori region. Yet, neither

Fukushima Prefecture nor the government has

set up any concrete programme to assist the self-

evacuees and the ‘stayers’, thus leaving a deeply

divided and broken community.

Divided communities and families The nuclear accident is creating many rifts and

tensions in Fukushima’s affected communi-

ties. One of the main causes of these divisions

stems from the government’s decision to raise

the radiation dose reference level for Fukushima

from 1 mSv/year to 1–20 mSv/year, as well as

its emphasis that radiation exposures of up to

20 mSv/year, and in some cases up to an accumu-

lative dose of 100 mSv, have little effect on health.

This policy of reassurance, rather than precaution,

has created an atmosphere where those who chal-

lenge the official notion of safety are viewed as

anti-establishment, disturbing the harmony of the

community, and egoistic, jeopardising the commu-

nity’s joint effort to overcome hardship.

The main divisive issue for the evacuees is that

of return. Those who openly express unwillingness

to return are often regarded as selfish and disloyal

to the community to which they belong. This has

thus become a taboo subject among the evacu-

ees, as revealing one’s preference implies that the

person concerned is likely to be pigeonholed into

one of two boxes: ‘willing to return’ (loyal) or ‘not

92 The newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, ‘Ima demo hinan shitai, fukushima shimin no 34%: shi tyousa’ (Author’s transla-

tion: 34% of residents in Fukushima City currently wish

to evacuate, the City’s survey found), 17 September 2012.

willing to return’ (disloyal). Fukushima university

professor Akira Imai, author of the three afore-

mentioned evacuee surveys, asserts that forcing

the evacuees to choose between ‘return’ and ‘no re-

turn’ should be avoided (as a policy) because this

transforms a situation of ‘not being able to return’

into one of ‘not wanting to return’ thus leaving

those who are anxious about the radiation risk and

reluctant to return to condemnation exposed to

judgement from the rest of the community (Imai,

2012b). Thus, whereas previously individuals had

had no choice but to evacuate and this common

plight had given them a sense of unity, the choice

of return is now dividing communities, stigmatis-

ing those reluctant to return and causing further

trauma to the evacuee communities.

Moreover, tension has also arisen between evac-

uee communities and host communities within

Fukushima Prefecture. Iwaki City, situated 30–40

km south of the crippled nuclear station, for ex-

ample, hosts the highest number of evacuees

(23,00093) from the evacuation zone due to its

geographical proximity. The interviews with the

evacuees and Iwaki residents revealed friction be-

tween the evacuee community and the city’s resi-

dents. This is mainly caused by the government’s

different treatment for the affected population.

During the first six months following the accident,

the northern part of Iwaki City was included in

the recommended evacuation zone and thus many

residents, including those who were living outside

of the designated zone, evacuated with or without

government assistance. In addition, the city’s agri-

culture and tourism industries have been hard hit

by radioactive contamination from the accident.

Life has become difficult for the residents but,

despite this hardship, they do not receive much

financial compensation or assistance from the gov-

ernment because the city has not been included

in any evacuation zone since October 2011 and

they perceive this situation as unfair. On the other

hand, the evacuees from the evacuation zone who

took refuge in the city receive various types of

compensation from the government. As an Iwaki

resident explains:

These evacuees who receive a lot of money

from the government act like the ‘new rich’ buy-

ing all the goods in a shop and always eating at

restaurants. They don’t work and spend all day

in a gambling house wasting the compensation

money. Plus, there are many car accidents in the

city because they are villagers and do not know

how to drive in a city.

93 Source: Iwaki City council. (http://www.city.iwaki.

fukushima.jp/info/dbps_data/_material_/info/zhi-

gai20120912.pdf)

STUDY 05/20134 2 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

This situation is further isolating the evacuee

community from the host community and adding

more stress to their displacement.

Furthermore, residents from the Naka-dori re-

gion in the Fukushima Prefecture are divided on

the issue of evacuation. The interviews with self-

evacuees and the Naka-dori residents found that

those who self-evacuated are seen as ‘the privi-

leged’ or ‘the escapees’ within the community

and they thus often feel isolated and abandoned.

On the contrary, those who stay, mostly for eco-

nomic reasons,94 are frequently envious of those

who evacuate and often feel deprived and mar-

ginalised. Moreover, this division or tension does

not stop at the community level: it also penetrates

family relationships. Differing perceptions of ra-

diation risk are causing tensions within families

or couples both among self-evacuees and stayers.

The recent survey conducted by the Fukushima

City found that 62% of self-evacuees are living

apart from other family members and 71% of them

answered that they had no prospect of going back

to live together.95 The field interviews also found

that the majority of self-evacuees are mothers with

children, whose husbands have stayed behind in

Fukushima. The main reason for this separation is

the husband’s employment. In order to meet the

costs of voluntary evacuation, husbands often

stay behind in Fukushima to continue working.

A few self-evacuees also pointed to a difference

of opinion between husband and wife as a reason

for separation. In their view, in the traditional

communities of Fukushima, the husband and his

parents tend to give credence to the authorities’

reassurances on the radiation risk, whereas the

wife tends to worry about the radiation effect on

their children. These wives are sometimes treat-

ed as cowardly and naive by their husbands and

parents-in-law. Frustrated by their husbands’ in-

action, some mothers decide to evacuate on their

own, taking the children to their maternal grand-

parents’ house if this is located outside Fukushima

Prefecture. Equally, among the stayer families, the

wife becomes disillusioned with her husband due

to different opinions on radiation risk and fissures

appear in their relationship. Communities and

families in Fukushima are thus suffering from rifts

and weakening community ties that will take long

time to heal.

94 The survey conducted among the self-evacuees and resi-

dents in the Fukushima Prefecture by two NGOs, Friends

of Earth Japan and Fukuro-no-kai, in September-Octo-

ber 2011 revealed that residents stayed in Fukushima

mainly for economic or job-related reasons.

95 Asahi Shimbun, 17 September 2012, op.cit.

5. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TSUNAMI EVACUATION AND THE NUCLEAR EVACUATION From the field interviews, we found that the

pattern and consequences of the two evacuations,

one caused by the tsunami and the other by the

nuclear accident, were markedly different. In

particular, the evacuation process, the authori-

ties’ disaster response, the prospect of return and

the challenges facing the evacuees one year after

the disaster are significantly dissimilar, though

both displacements were induced by the same

combined disaster. This section attempts to iden-

tify the specific features of the two evacuations

through a comparative analysis. Table 5 illustrates

the main elements of these differences.

Firstly, as regards the reasons for evacuating,

evacuation from a natural disaster is ultimately

‘voluntary’ while nuclear evacuation can be com-

pulsory or ‘voluntary’ depending on one’s loca-

tion – in other words, depending on whether an

individual evacuates from within or from outside

the official evacuation zone. Certainly, evacu-

ation from a tsunami is not strictly voluntary in-

sofar as a person flees because his or her life is at

risk. By the same token, the self-evacuees from

Fukushima decided to evacuate because they felt

their lives and those of their children were under

threat. Nevertheless, the distinction between vol-

untary and compulsory evacuation impacts the na-

ture of post-disaster financial assistance that the

displaced receive from the state: financial aid on

compassionate grounds for the tsunami evacuees,

financial compensation for the nuclear evacuees

from the evacuation zones and little assistance for

the self-evacuees.

One of the specific characteristics of the nuclear

evacuation is that the displaced have tended to

flee further and are now dispersed throughout the

country, while tsunami evacuees are most often

displaced within the town or the same prefecture.

The main reason for this is that as nuclear evacu-

ation is induced by the risk of radiation, distance

is an important way for evacuees to protect them-

selves and feel safe. For example, half of the inter-

viewed population of Futaba town is currently dis-

placed outside Fukushima Prefecture.96 Another

distinct characteristic of the nuclear evacuation

is that evacuees were displaced many times com-

pared to the tsunami evacuation. Our field inter-

views show that nuclear evacuees changed their

place of refuge four or five times on average before

settling into temporary shelters. In contrast, tsu-

96 Source: Futaba town (http://www.town.futaba.fukush-

ima.jp/hinan.html/). (in Japanese)

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 4 3IDDRI

nami evacuees changed their place of refuge two

or three times on average. Many of the tsunami

evacuees first evacuated to hilltops to avoid the

tsunami, then moved quickly to emergency evacu-

ation centres such as schools and finally settled in

temporary shelters three to six months later. The

NAIIC report (NAIIC, 2012) also confirmed the re-

sult of our study and found that 70% of the nuclear

evacuees were displaced at least four times. One

of the main causes of this phenomenon is that the

evacuation zone was expanded over time by the

authorities, thus obliging the already displaced

population to flee further away each time. Over a

three-month period starting on 11 March 2011, the

authorities (Fukushima Prefecture and the gov-

ernment) issued a total of eight evacuation orders

and recommendations. Another reason for this

repeated displacement is that, at the time the nu-

clear evacuees fled, they were not informed of the

severity of the accident or the radiation risk level.

As a result, they initially sheltered in locations

close to their hometown and later evacuated fur-

ther afield once they learnt more about the status

of the accident and the radiation leak. This repeat-

ed flight inflicted both psychological and physical

distress on the nuclear evacuees.

As for psychological stress, both categories

of evacuees are currently deeply anxious about

their uncertain future, but the trauma of the nu-

clear evacuees appears to be persisting over the

longer term. The tsunami evacuees experienced

acute psychological stress immediately after the

disaster, having suffered the sudden loss of fam-

ily members, friends, and homes. However, the

trauma caused by this loss could subside with

time. Nuclear evacuees, on the other hand, are

suffering from a psychological stress that seems to

be increasing with time. The authorities provide

them with scant information about their future

and whether they will eventually be able to return

to their towns or homes, which means that they

are unable to take the next step in rebuilding their

lives. They feel blocked in permanent uncertainty

and this psychological imprisonment is taking a

toll on their health and well-being over time.

There is also a difference between the two evac-

uations with respect to the target of the evacu-

ees’ complaints. In the case of natural disasters,

it is hard to lay the blame for psychological pain

on a specific party. To vent their frustration, the

tsunami survivors thus tend to criticise their lo-

cal municipal office for its shortcomings as it was

the main actor in the disaster management. On

the contrary, the Fukushima nuclear disaster was

caused by human error as well as by a natural dis-

aster and the nuclear victims have well-defined

interlocutors for their complaints – TEPCO, the

operator of the nuclear power plant, and the gov-

ernment. The handling of the Fukushima accident

by TEPCO and the authorities is severely criticised

not only by the evacuees but also by the public at

large. In Imai’s survey (Imai, 2011a), 86% of the

evacuees said that they were not satisfied with the

government’s disaster response and 83% were dis-

satisfied with TEPCO.

The current challenges facing evacuees are also

quite dissimilar. For the tsunami evacuees, the

prime concerns are resettlement and the rebuild-

ing of their houses and lives. Nuclear evacuees,

however, are still a long way from the reconstruc-

tion phase as they are not even sure where they

will live in the near future. Their concerns are fo-

cused on the issue of return, decontamination and

compensation from the government. They are un-

able to make plans for the future and suffer from

the loss of their previous life and identity.

Finally, the issue of resettlement/return reveals

another marked difference between the tsunami

evacuation and the nuclear evacuation. First of

all, the resettlement of the tsunami evacuees is or-

ganised on a purely voluntary basis and individual

choice is fully respected by both the authorities

and the community. Resettling in a safe place is

Table 5. Comparative analysis of the two evacuations Tsunami

(Natural Disaster) Nuclear Accident

(Industrial/Man-Made Disaster)

Nature of Evacuation

‘Voluntary’ Imposed/’Voluntary’

Place of Refuge Within the City or within the Prefecture

Outside of the City and often the Prefecture,

scattered all over Japan

Frequency of Displacement

2–3 times 4–5 times or more

Psychological Stress

Acute stress immediately after and progressively less with

time

Stress of not knowing its own future lingers over a long term, increment

with time

Main Target of Complaints

Municipal government Central government, TEPCO

Challenges Resettlement of the population, population

loss, building back better

Issue of return, decontamination,

community survival, loss of identity

Reconstruction Concentrate on infrastructure

Not yet reached this stage

Resettlement/ Return

Safety of the population is main concern,

individual choices

Highly politicised, collective choices

Transparency of Information

High Low

Decision-Making on Return

Democratic Top-Down

STUDY 05/20134 4 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

the primary concern for the evacuees and the local

authority. Should they decide to settle elsewhere,

this does not put their loyalty to the community

or their courage in overcoming hardship into ques-

tion. The only obstacles faced for the resettlement

of these evacuees are of a financial and adminis-

trative nature. For the nuclear evacuees, on the

other hand, the question of return involves com-

pletely different stakes. First, the issue is highly

politicised: the authorities including the govern-

ment, the prefectural government and several af-

fected municipalities have been encouraging these

evacuees to return. The municipalities, in par-

ticular, have emphasised that the choice to return

must be made on a collective basis as the town’s

very existence is at stake. Priority is thus placed

on the cohesiveness of the community rather than

on individual choices. One of government officials

interviewed during our research repeated that ‘we

will not abandon Fukushima’. The authorities’ em-

phasis on the region’s recovery and their determi-

nation to ‘normalise’ the Fukushima disaster situ-

ation have had many serious consequences for the

residents and the evacuees.

This official stance on the question of return

has also impacted the transparency of the infor-

mation communicated on the level of radioactive

contamination, the effect of radiation on human

health and the effectiveness of decontamination

operations, all of which are key issues condition-

ing the nuclear evacuees’ decision whether or not

to return. While the majority of these evacuees

are hesitant about going back due to the lack of

information, the decision to return has often been

made by the municipal offices without any thor-

ough discussion or consultation with the evacu-

ees. Thus, when it comes to resettlement/return,

a democratic decision-making process is wanting

in the case of nuclear evacuees in a contrast to the

case of the tsunami evacuees.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The triple disaster that hit Tohoku on 11 March

2011 is the most serious crisis that Japan has had to

face since the end of the Second World War. Some

refer to the disaster as the second largest defeat

that Japan has experienced after its 1945 defeat. In

many ways, the disaster has served as a revelation

as well as a reality check for the democratic, pros-

perous, safe society that the country has aspired to

build over the last sixty-six years.

Our field study confirmed the assumption that

Japan had intensively prepared itself against

tsunami disasters. The disaster drills conducted

prior to the disaster and countermeasures such

as tsunami barriers constructed along the coast

indeed saved many lives. Yet, in some instances,

these preparations in fact created an excessive de-

gree of reassurance among the local population,

who came to believe that they were immune to

the risk of tsunamis and thus underestimated the

threat during the actual disaster. In other cases,

previous tsunami experiences had instilled a fixed

idea about tsunami risk in people’s minds, which

led them to misjudge both the need to evacuate

and the timing. In other words, the risk percep-

tion shaped by disaster preparations and previous

experience did not always lessen the population’s

vulnerability in the wake of extreme disasters such

as the 2011 Japanese tsunami. In addition, one of

the most serious shortcomings revealed by the

catastrophe was the lack of preparedness regard-

ing the evacuation of the elderly and persons with

reduced mobility. Given that Japan is facing the

growing demographic challenge of an aging popu-

lation, future disaster plans need to urgently ad-

dress this issue.

The Fukushima nuclear accident, on the other

hand, has revealed the total unpreparedness of the

Japanese authorities and the local population. The

evacuation of the population by the local authori-

ties amounted to chaotic improvisation and the

population was forced to evacuate with no infor-

mation as to the gravity of the situation or the risk

of radiation. Furthermore, the authorities did not

promptly or fully communicate information on ra-

dioactive contamination and health risks from ra-

diation exposure to the concerned population. The

choice of return tends to be a foregone conclusion

decided on more or less unilaterally by the author-

ities without much consultation with evacuees

and municipalities, and the collective choice for

return is encouraged at the expense of individual

choices and safety concerns. The displaced popu-

lation thus remains at a loss with little prospect for

the future. Moreover, the way in which the disas-

ter has been handled by the authorities has creat-

ed profound divisions and tensions in the affected

communities. The nuclear disaster has triggered

a major social disaster in which communities re-

main divided regarding both the perceived radia-

tion risk and the issue of return. The population

has lost trust in public authorities as well as among

themselves, which is threatening the social cohe-

sion and the sense of solidarity that previously ex-

isted within these communities.

What we have also seen in the case of the nu-

clear accident, in contrast to the tsunami case, is

that the likelihood of an accident was purposely

understated by the government and the plant op-

erator, creating the myth that their nuclear power

plants were almost failsafe. In the quasi absence

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

STUDY 05/2013 4 5IDDRI

of a realistic perception of risk, the municipalities

and population in the vicinity of the nuclear power

plants were extremely vulnerable and insufficient-

ly prepared for a severe accident and evacuation.

The disaster demonstrated, especially concern-

ing the exploitation of SPEEDI data, that Japan’s

advanced technology and financial capabilities

served little purpose when it came to improving

disaster preparedness and response, as there was

a lack of political will to use them effectively.

Japan is one of the world’s largest economies,

best known for its highly advanced technologies.

The experience of the 11 March triple disaster has

shown that even a country with such economic and

technological resources could not fully mitigate

the effects of the disaster or avoid a serious nuclear

accident. It suggests that no country is immune to

the risk of extreme disasters and that the basic as-

sumptions and disaster scenarios used to design

disaster prevention measures should be thoroughly

revisited, particularly in the current context of cli-

mate change. Moreover, the post-disaster manage-

ment of the Japanese authorities, particularly re-

garding the Fukushima nuclear accident, revealed

many shortcomings in terms of transparency of

information and democratic decision-makings vis-

à-vis the affected population. This confirms our hy-

pothesis that democracies do not always respond

better to disasters, especially a nuclear one. The

repercussions of the Japanese disaster thus go well

beyond the national borders and other democra-

cies can learn many relevant lessons.

STUDY 05/20134 6 IDDRI

Disaster Evacuation from Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Disaster and the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

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chiho taiheiyouoki jishin ni taisuru tsunami keihou

happyou keika to kadai (author’s translation: The process

and challenges of issuing tsunami warnings for the

earthquake that hit the Tohoku region off the Pacific

coast), 13 June 2011, available in Japanese at: http://

www.bousai.go.jp/jishin/chubou/higashinihon/2/1.pdf

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jishin tsunami sokuhou (author’s translation: Report on the

earthquake and tsunami alert in disasters “2011 Tohoku off

the Pacific Coast Earthquake), 17 August 2011, available in

Japanese at: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/kishou/books/

saigaiji/saigaiji_201101/saigaiji_201101.pdf

Kainuma, H. (2011), “Fukushima” ron genshiryoku mura

ha naze umaretanoka (author’s translation: The Theory

of Fukushima: How was the Nuclear Village formed?),

Seidosya, Tokyo.

Kawata, T. (2011), “Dojou osen mondai to sono taiou”

(author’s translation: The radioactive soil contamination

and its management), a presentation given by a research

fellow of Nuclear Waste Management Organisation of

Japan (NUMO), at the 16th Atomic Energy Commission

meeting held on 11 May 2011, available in Japanese at:

http://www.aec.go.jp/jicst/NC/iinkai/teirei/siryo2011/

siryo16/siryo2.pdf

Koide, H. (2012), Genpatsu no uso (author’s translation:

The Lie of Nuclear Power), Fusosha, Tokyo.

Magnan, A. (2010), “For a better understanding of adaptive

capacity to climate change: a research framework”, Studies

No.02/10 May 2010, IDDRI-Sciences Po, Paris.

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Japan’s Nuclear Safety Regulation”, Asia Pacific Research,

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and Technology (MEXT) (2011a), Guide on

Radiation for School Teachers, 24 June 2011,

available in Japanese at: http://www.mext.go.jp/