On Leaving Fukushima in March 2011

In the parking lot of my apartment building one can find a number of vehicles with Fukushima licence plates.  The owners of those vehicles are all likely evacuees.  One in particular is my neighbour.  Up until recently both he and his wife were living in the apartment next to me but the wife succeeded in getting a job in Tokyo and she departed in early April.  The husband has remained behind whilst trying to make arrangements to relocate his business to Tokyo.

I sensed he was going to be departing soon when I saw that he had taken down his daughter's plastic sled which had been hanging outside his apartment on the grid that guards his kitchen window.  So when I heard a dolly in the hallway yesterday evening I stuck my head out my door to call on him and ask if he'd like to head out for a drink or two.

We ended up at a local bar/cafe and chatted for a few hours over a number of beers.  One short story which stuck in my mind was his retelling of how he and his family ended up in Yonezawa.

The essence of the story was that immediately after the March 11th earthquake, he had seen circulated images of what had happened to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant.  Needless to say he and his wife were skeptical of the reports from the news channels and authorities that there was no immediate danger.  When word started spreading that there had been a meltdown there was no hesitation on his part to pack up and quite literally, get out of Dodge.

So the three of them, husband, wife and daughter, undertook a passage through the snow covered Kuriko Pass Highway to arrive in Yonezawa, a city which they knew nothing of and where they had no contacts, friends or relatives.  They had no information on where to go so they stopped off at a police station to ask for assistance.  The gist of their query being "We're from Fukushima.  Can you tell us where to go?".  The police were at least minimally prepared to handle an influx of evacuees and advised them to head to the municipal gymnasium.  I can imagine that the place wasn't exactly the warmest place to be as Yonezawa is typically snowbound in March.

And so began three years of life in Yamagata.  After hearing that story I can fully appreciate his wife's exclamation of "Goodbye to our evacuee lifestyle!" in my classroom back in March after she got news that she had landed a job in Tokyo.  After all, she had been commuting to Fukushima from Yonezawa all that time.  While I'll miss their company, I'm glad that at least one family has been able to find a new home and a more stable lifestyle.