September 20, 2021
FUKUSHIMA – The central and local governments have begun encouraging people from outside Fukushima Prefecture to move into areas surrounding Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, hoping that new residents will revive the areas.
The central government plans to lift evacuation orders in all areas categorized as difficult-to-return zones so that residents wishing to return to their homes can do so within the 2020s. However, in areas where such an order has already been lifted, residents have been slow to return.
300 newcomers sought
I’ve long wanted to contribute to the reconstruction of Fukushima, said Daisuke Yamamoto, 49, an engineer who moved from Sapporo to the city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, in August.
Yamamoto said he aimed to set up his own business there.
The central government’s financial support system, which began in July, encouraged him to move in. The system grants up to 2 million Yen to those who move into 12 municipalities near the nuclear plant from outside the prefecture. Additional funds of up to 4 million Yen will be paid if they launch a business there. The government’s goal is to bring in 300 new people this fiscal year alone.
Local municipalities are preparing for new residents. In July, the Fukushima prefectural government set up a joint support center with the 12 municipalities. In Minami-Soma, vacant houses will be renovated into rental housing. In the village of Katsurao, eight units of municipal apartment housing will be constructed.
10% want to return
Behind the move is the slow return of residents to areas where the evacuation orders were lifted. The Reconstruction Agency and others surveyed the residents of five towns, including Futaba and Okuma, and found that only about 10% wanted to return.
The town of Namie, where the evacuation order was partially lifted in 2017, now has a population of 1,717. In fiscal 2019, 70 people in 49 households moved into the town from outside the prefecture, thanks in part to the presence of factories opened by 10 companies, but the population is still only about a tenth of its pre-disaster size.
The only way to keep the town going is to further increase the number of new arrivals, a town official said.
Commuting, restoring
Over 10 years after the nuclear accident, people who have rebuilt their lives in areas to which they evacuated will have the option of having residences in two locations, commuting to Fukushima Prefecture while carrying on with their present lives elsewhere.
A 66-year-old man who moved his family to Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, has a home in an area categorized as a difficult-to-return zone in Namie. In order to return to that home, he would need to repair the now dilapidated house. His children have found jobs in Ibaraki. The man’s life in Ibaraki, where he grows vegetables in rented fields, has become settled.
I have no choice but to spend two hours each way to get to and from Fukushima, he said.
In a survey conducted last fiscal year by the towns of Futaba, Okuma and Tomioka on their residents, about 60% said they wanted to maintain ties with their hometowns.
The evacuation order for Naraha was lifted in 2015, but the number of residents in the town now has leveled off at 50% of the population before the accident. The town aims to raise the figure to 60% by 2030, or 5,130 people, by subsidizing JR train fares for residents who live in two locations.
The town of Tomioka supports residents who have been evacuated outside the town in the hope of bringing about reconstruction by commuting. It opened social center and support office facilities in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, and Saitama City, which are two places where many evacuated Tomioka residents now live. In those facilities, staff check up on the health of the evacuees or give counseling.
Those who want to go home someday will become important people for the progress of reconstruction, said Yusuke Yamashita, a sociology professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University. The central and local governments should continue to provide assistance from the perspective of reconstruction by commuting.
Fukushima 311 Watchdogs 
Kurt Vonnegut
The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War. – Kurt Vonnegut
A friend said his power bill went, from 77 dollars in July to 300 dollars because he bought 2 more fans and another air conditioner, so he could survive in July, he had a heart attack last week, from the ungodly humidity and heat in Mississippi . At no time did anything occur to me, about how hot and uncomfortable things were getting till the hurricanes came and, ac was destroyed. People dropping like flys from heat stroke. Businesses closed.
I am becoming more aware that the Covid thing, is possibly a smoke screen for economic and climate collapse, that will not happen in 50 years, or 20 years, or 5 years. It is happening now! Like a 10 pronged, grapes of wrath. And the corporations, as usual come first for the bailouts. Like the great bank bailouts of 2008.
The vaccine and covid sensationalism is probably a concerted smoke-screen to cover, for climate change events that are now occuring and severe economic trouble . People are dying from hurricanes that are occuring lol.. every week and heat stroke.
Human workers cannot survive w 94 percent humidity and 90 degree tempsso long
Burger king , the grocery stores, jack in the crack, Cajun and Mexican restaurants, bbq, McDonald’s , restaurants all closed from ac gone bad or too much humidity. Workers sent home . Oh but the govt says thats not supposed to happen for 50 years lol. I see it w my own eyes..
300 people died of heat stroke last week in Louisiana. They died, from the grid being down from hurricane Ida. Ida affected many places. The water here is not drinkable. I have had diarrhea for 4 days from bad water here from hurricane Nicholas that hit last week.
Half of this town is abandoned and there are caravans leaving the gulf coast of Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. It is worse that the great depression. The media and government are not even talking about it or they are lying about it.
I saw the Mountains of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and new mexico on fire last summer . The huge wildfires, in the Colorado Rockies backbone of USA western mountainns. Meanwhile, the same shit was happening in montana Oregon, idaho, Alaska, california. Boy, what a wakeup call that was!
Elon musk, the conman is busy selling his Sirens of Titan, Mars rides!
Outer space travel, is just bullshit. It always was. Elon is just a crook. Any astronaut at nasa, will tell u, that they have had cancer. They will tell you that the radioactive shit in space will kill u in 2 weeks. Houston to earth, please wake-up!
Many people are packing up. It is like the last depression . Tthe dust bowls the heat the shit economies. The death disease and famine. The homelessness. The evil of people forced to be moving out to nowhere like , in Steinbeck’s grapes of wrath. No job security can’t pay rents shit healthcare.
Bidens answer to the economic and climate catastrophe is to build more nuclear bombs and nuke subs to threaten china. Nuclear subs with reactors. Nuke subs are Mini nuke reactors that can blowup anytime sending a 1000 nuke bomb fallout equivalents into the environment. They will be in Australia’s harbors, for no good reason but death destruction, and evil greed. Each sub reactor we and sub with nuke missiles is the equiv of thousands of Hiroshima bombs when they explode or something goes wrong there no place to put the cancer causing , murderous nuke waste.used to make them run them and that exists when the are decommissioned.
The politicians are cutting off medicaid in southern states. Kids getting paid chickenfeed, no decent health insurance, taxed to death . Exorbitant rents. Young people , getting worked to death. As soon as I clear this trailer space off, I can only pray that I can get in a stick built apt where I can survive a little longer.
Many people in America are just living in their own little bubbles now. Brainwashed by thousands of lines, of internet misinformation, religious bullshit, patriotic jingoism, and streams of media propaganda.
Trump demonized the Chinese. He wanted to use a tactical nuke on iran or somewhere else to show the world he meant business but, is Biden much different. The Australian people need to risup and throw fascist clown Morrison in prison, before it’s too late
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