Fukushima evacuee explains difficulties of relocating 1 year after nuclear disaster, tsunami

TOKYO—At this time last year, Saori Kanzawa made a decision to escape.

Kanzawa lived with her husband and 5-year-old daughter in Koriyama, Japan, 35 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, when it experienced a meltdown after a magnitude 9 earthquake shook the region last March.

Kanzawa said she was never worried about living close to the power plant, even after the plant’s first hydrogen explosion March 12, 2011.

But by March 14, Kanzawa heard reports of a second explosion and that the United States was advising its military personnel to stay 80 kilometers away from the evacuation zone. At that point, she began to seriously consider moving, as did a lot of people in the area.

“The radiation levels were very high,” she said. “It was impossible for a child to live there.”

So Kanzawa decided to relocate to Tokyo with her daughter, Riko. But the decision wasn’t easy.

Moving to Tokyo meant leaving behind a community she loved, including her house, her possessions, Riko’s grandparents and, at the time, her husband.

Kanzawa’s husband, who worked at a public relations agency in Koriyama, stayed behind for almost two months before joining his family in Tokyo.

This sort of breaking up of families has been a common situation for those affected by the Fukushima meltdown, but has not been typical of evacuees from other disasters, such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. In those cases, families have tended to move together because it’s clear when there’s danger. With the threat of radiation, that’s not the case, and everyone must decide for themselves.

Kanzawa said many of the people who chose to stay or could not afford to leave were spiteful toward those who did.

“There’s this feeling of community, that you don’t want to leave people behind, so a lot of people leave in the middle of the night,” Kanzawa said. “After I left, some of my friends said to me, ‘So you think it’s okay to just save yourself and leave us behind?’”

But even after evacuees managed to make the decision to get out, there was still an ongoing fear of discrimination. After the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, many survivors who experienced aftereffects from the radiation found it difficult to find jobs. Women found it difficult to get married due to fears that they would not be able to give birth to healthy children.

Many fear that cycle might start again after Fukushima. Some say it already has.
There have been reports of cars with Fukushima-area license plates being vandalized or rejected at gas stations and of evacuee children being bullied at school. Kanzawa said she has not experienced any of these things yet, but fears she might someday.

“Right now, there’s no discrimination. Everyone’s been pretty sympathetic. ... But if five or 10 years from now we start to suffer health effects, people will start to be scared,” Kanzawa said with tears in her eyes. “I am a woman and my daughter will be a woman, so if she can’t get married it will be really sad.”

Koriyama is still home for Kanzawa, who said she would like to return, but can’t take that chance for her daughter’s sake. She said that only after Riko is 18 and no longer living with her will she go back, even if the government says it’s safe to return before then.

“Even now, the places where you can live safely in Fukushima are very little. There aren’t many,” Kanzawa said. “So we still think it’s dangerous to go there. That’s the situation and the problems we’re facing now, one year later.”