Structure of the Issues Surrounding the Nuclear Accident Evacuees: What Has Been Seen While Supporting Town Meetings

Since August 2011, "Tomioka sub group" of the Sociology Study Group of Large-scale evacuation (representative YAMASHITA, Yusuke ) has been conducting interviews with Tomioka town residents in Fukushima Prefecture that were forced to evacuate from their home town due to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. While supporting town meetings organized by stakeholders, we recognized the following issues clear;

1) Problems that evacuees have faced are complex and very extensive.

2) However, those issues are not correctly recognized by policy makers.

3) Therefore, the present policy does not effectively relieve the affected people.

4) As regional restoration plans were decided hastily, the problems of the affected people deteriorated.

5) The problem of Japanese legal system which surrounds local autonomy is behind such issues.

6) In addition to these issues, it is not possible to deny the existence of public opinion to boost the seriousness of these problems.

  As those issues are caused by the deviation between the premise on current reconstruction policies and problems that nuclear accident evacuees are facing, the situation might lead to collapse of the current policy and municipalities. In order to improve the situation, the following initiatives are required; survival and continuation of the affected communities, feedbacks from communities to decision makers by way of the town government, and long-term policies that take account of the lifestyles that vary as time goes on.