Survival Continues

One of the reasons that the Great East Japan Earthquake has not finished yet is continuous deaths of the sufferers. The government of Japan acknowledged that 40 deaths after a year or longer from the occurrence of the quake were related to the earthquake. 35 out of those 40 were in Fukushima, where a large amount of residents had evacuated to avoid effects of the accident in the First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. There is no solution to stop those deaths.

Total amount of earthquake-related deaths from right after the quake is 2,554, out of which residents in Fukushima prefecture occupies 1,373. According to the report of Tokyo Shimbun, 789 of them were the people who lost their houses and were living in temporary houses prepared by the government outside their hometowns, where it is impossible for them to live due to the high radiation.

Why does Fukushima keep on producing such tragic victims? Most sufferers in Fukushima are different from those in Miyagi or Iwate where the main reason of evacuation is devastation by tsunami. When the cities and towns there would be rebuilt, people can go back to their homes. But, it is highly unclear when the towns in Fukushima contaminated by radioactive materials will be rebuilt. Evacuated people from Fukushima continuously need to worry about when they can go back home.

Over 80 percent people of 35 Fukushima evacuators were 75 years old or older. They overwhelmingly died with exhaustion of no hope for returning, unclear future or addiction of alcohol to ease their frustration. They moved from one shelter to another for seven times in average. It is no wonder that they could not be feeling secured. Moreover, they also suffer from skepticism against the government that is consecutively changing its policy. Even if the government allows them to go back home, no one can be sure that they will be safe.

The longer the time is spent, the more difficult in determining earthquake-related deaths. There is a report that the patients in evacuation have a tendency to be sick in psychological disease rather than physical illness. The relation between the earthquake or nuclear plant accident and evacuees’ deaths is getting more uncertain. To protect human rights of those suffered people, the government needs to set a longer-term standard for acknowledging earthquake-related deaths. It is important for Japanese society to save lives that had survived the disaster that would occur once in thousand years.