Many families with small children have not returned to municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture that were affected by the 2011 nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, a Yomiuri Shimbun survey has found.
According to the survey, next fiscal year, a total of 531 children will attend public elementary and junior high schools in nine municipalities -- five in which public schools will resume operating in April and four in which schools have already resumed operating following the lifting of evacuation directives. This is only 8.6 percent of the total number of children who had been enrolled at public schools in these nine municipalities before the nuclear accident. The survey shed light on the situation, finding that many families with small children have been slow to return to their hometowns as they have already established their lives in the places to which they evacuated, such as by finding employment.
Nearly seven years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. While reconstruction work has progressed in areas hit by the tsunami, the difficulties facing Fukushima Prefecture in areas where residents have been away for a long period of time have become more evident.
After the nuclear accident, evacuation directives were issued for 11 municipalities in the prefecture. However, due to progress in the decontamination of radioactive materials and other reasons, evacuation directives for nine municipalities -- excluding difficult-to-return zones and the towns of Okuma and Futaba, where the Fukushima No. 1 plant is located -- had been lifted one after another by spring last year.
Each of the nine municipalities had been conducting classes in temporary school buildings and other places in evacuation destinations. However, following the lifting of the evacuation directives, five municipalities plan to resume school in April. These consist of four municipalities that were entirely subject to the directives -- the towns of Tomioka and Namie and the villages of Katsurao and Iitate -- and the town of Kawamata, of which only its Yamakiya district was covered by the directives.
However, according to the survey, the total number of children who will attend schools in these five municipalities from April is 132, or 3.3 percent of the total number before the accident.
In the other four municipalities -- including the village of Kawauchi -- where school resumed from fiscal 2012 to 2017, 399 children, or 18.4 percent of the pre-accident level, will attend school from next fiscal year.
This means that across the nine municipalities, only 8.6 percent of the total number of students from before the accident will attend next fiscal year.
The same tendency is seen among preschoolers. According to the survey, a total of 156 preschoolers will go to facilities such as nintei kodomoen centers for early childhood education and care in these nine municipalities, only 7.8 percent of the number before the accident.
Of the five municipalities where public schools will resume in April, eight students will go to school in the town of Namie. This figure accounts for 0.5 percent of the pre-accident number.
"Many parents have found employment in their evacuation destinations or do not want to change their childrens' learning environments," an official of the town's board of education said. There are still many zones covered by evacuation directives in the central western part of the town. The town will continue to run a temporary school in Nihonmatsu in the same prefecture.
For schools in the village of Iitate, 75 children, the largest number among the five municipalities and 14.1 percent of the pre-accident level, are scheduled to attend. However, more than 90 percent of them will not live in the village but will travel to school by bus from their evacuation destinations, such as the city of Fukushima.
Of residents in the nine municipalities where evacuation directives have been lifted, only 15 percent have returned, and many of them are elderly people.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
