Hopes of Home Fade Among Japan’s Displaced
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/asia/hopes-of-home-fade-among-japans-displaced.html?ref=world
The community center of a temporary housing complex in Aizu-Wakamatsu, where some fled after last years nuclear disaster.
AIZU-WAKAMATSU, Japan As cold northerly winds sprinkle the first snow on the mountains surrounding this medieval city, those who fled here after last years Fukushima nuclear disaster are losing hope that they will ever return to their old homes.
The mayor of Okuma, a town near the Fukushima Daiichi plant that was hastily evacuated when a huge earthquake and tsunami crippled the reactors cooling systems on March 11, 2011, has vowed to lead residents back home as soon as radiation levels are low enough. But the slow pace of the governments cleanup efforts, and the risk of another leak from the plants reactors, forced local officials to admit in September that it might be at least a decade before the town could be resettled.
A growing number of evacuees from Okuma have become pessimistic about ever living there again. At a temporary housing complex here in Aizu-Wakamatsu, a city 60 miles west of the plant, the mostly elderly residents say they do not have that much time or energy left to rebuild their town.
Many said they preferred plans that got them out of temporary housing but helped them maintain the friendships and communal bonds built over a lifetime, like rebuilding the town farther away from the plant.