September 21, 2015
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 5
Japan lifts evacuation order for town near doomed nuke plant
HESITANT HOMECOMING. A woman lights
candles during a candlelight installation event in
Naraha, Fukushima, northern Japan. Residents of
Naraha returned to live in the town near the Fuku-
shima nuclear power plant for the first time since
the 2011 disaster. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
By Mari Yamaguchi
The Associated Press
ARAHA, Japan — Japan’s
government has lifted a four-
and-a-half-year-old
evacuation
order for the northeastern town of Naraha
that had sent all of the town’s 7,400
residents away following the disaster at
the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant.
Naraha became the first to get the order
lifted among seven municipalities forced to
empty entirely due to radiation con-
tamination
following
the
massive
earthquake and tsunami that sent the
plant’s reactors into triple meltdowns in
March 2011.
The central government has said radia-
tion levels in Naraha have fallen to levels
deemed safe following decontamination
efforts.
According to a government survey,
however, 53 percent of the evacuees from
Naraha, which is 12 miles south of the
nuclear plant, say they’re either not ready
to return home permanently or are
undecided. Some say they’ve found jobs
elsewhere over the past few years, while
others cite radiation concerns.
Naraha represents a test case, as most
residents remain cautious amid lingering
health concerns and a lack of infra-
structure. In the once-abandoned town, a
segment of a national railway is still out of
service, with the tracks covered with
grass. Some houses are falling down and
wild boars roam around at night.
Only about 100 of the nearly 2,600
N
households have returned since a trial
period began in April. Last year, the
government lifted evacuation orders for
parts of two nearby towns, but only about
half of their former residents have
returned.
Naraha mayor Yukiei Matsumoto said it
marked an important milestone.
“Our clock started moving again,” he
said during a ceremony held at a children’s
park. “The lifting of the evacuation order is
one key step, but this is just a start.”
Matsumoto said he hoped Naraha could
set a good example of a recovering town for
the other affected municipalities.
About 100,000 people from about 10
municipalities around the wrecked plant
still cannot go home. The government
hopes to lift all evacuation orders except
for the most contaminated areas closest to
the plant by March 2017 — a plan many
evacuees criticize as an attempt to
showcase Fukushima’s recovery ahead of
the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
Matsumoto said fear of radiation and
nuclear safety is still present, and that
Naraha has a long way to go in its
recovery. The town will be without a
medical clinic until October, while a new
prefectural hospital won’t be ready until
February.
A grocery store started free delivery
services in July, and a shopping center will
open next year. Still, many residents,
especially those who don’t drive, face
limited options for their daily necessities.
Residents have been given personal
dosimeters to check their own radiation
levels. To accommodate their concerns, the
town is also running 24-hour monitoring
at a water-filtration plant, testing tap
water for radioactive materials.
Toshiko Yokota, a 53-year-old home-
maker who had to leave her Naraha house
after the disaster, said she came back to
attend the ceremony and clean her home,
and that she eventually wants to move
back with her husband. Their house was
damaged by rats, bugs, and rainwater
leaks in their absence, and still needs to be
fully renovated, but she hopes to return in
a few years.
“My friends are all in different places
because of the nuclear accident, and the
town doesn’t even look the same, but this is
still my hometown and it really feels good
to be back,” said Yokota, who currently
lives in another town in Fukushima
prefecture.
“I still feel uneasy about some things,
like radiation levels and the lack of a
medical facility,” she said. “In order to
come back, I have to keep up my hope and
stay healthy.”
Chinese district threatens to kill all pet dogs
BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese district
government is giving dog owners a stark
choice: Get rid of your pets or we’ll come to
your home and kill them on the spot.
Even in a country where dog ownership
is tightly regulated, the order issued by the
Dayang New District in the eastern city of
Jinan is extreme.
“No person is permitted to keep a dog of
any kind,” said the notice posted on
gateposts around the community of mostly
high-rise apartment blocks. “Deal with it
on your own, or else the committee will
organize people to enter your home and
club the dog to death right there.”
Regional governments have killed stray
animals before, but Dayang’s order also
covers dogs that have been registered and
vaccinated.
Culls often follow outbreaks of rabies, a
disease that kills about 2,000 Chinese each
year, but the order cites only the
maintenance of environmental hygiene
and “everyone’s normal lives” as reasons.
People who answered calls at the district
government office said no one was
available to discuss the matter.
However, an unidentified worker from
the Dayang village committee interviewed
by a local television station insisted the
order was the will of the majority of the
district’s more than 1,000 residents.
“Dogs are always defecating all over the
place and bothering people. A lot of people
were complaining, so we wrote a public
notice to avoid a conflict,” the man said.
The order underscores continuing
weaknesses in China’s legal system,
particularly when it comes to police
powers and private-property protections.
It also points to the lack of rules on pets in
public, such as leash laws and fines for not
cleaning up after them.
While China has laws protecting
endangered species, it has yet to pass
animal-cruelty legislation.
Chinese often appear sharply divided
between animal lovers and those who see
dogs as a threat to the public.
The keeping of dogs as pets was
effectively outlawed during the first
decades of the People’s Republic of China
and was denounced by Communist leaders
as a bourgeois affectation and waste of
scarce resources.
Over the last 20 years, however, dog
ownership has grown exponentially,
despite continuing restrictions on large
dogs in urban areas. A nascent animal-
rights movement has also sprung up, with
dog lovers sometimes blockading trucks
shipping dogs off to markets to be served to
the relatively small percentage who eat
their meat.
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