Post-tsunami deaths due to stress, illness outnumber disaster toll in Fukushima

The March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami displaced thousands of people not just from the twin natural disasters but the subsequent meltdown of TEPCO's Daiichi-Fukushima nuclear power plant.   Given the magnitude of these 3 events the Japanese government offered huge sums of money for cleanup and rebuilding of the Tohoku area of northeast Japan but somehow these pronouncements haven't improved the lives of those affected by the disasters.  


People living in temporary housing have discovered they were poorly constructed with sloping floors, lack of funding for rebuilding,  lack of government accountability and isolation from their communities.


     Data compiled by officials and police show that almost three years after the huge waves smashed ashore, 1,656 people living in Fukushima Prefecture have died from stress and other illnesses related to the disaster, compared with 1,607 who were killed in the initial calamity.

“The biggest problem is the fact that people have been living in temporary conditions for so long,” Hiroyuki Harada, a Fukushima official dealing with victim assistance, told AFP.

“People have gone through dramatic changes of their environment. As a result, people who would not have died are dying,” he said.

Officials say that as well as those who died in the early stages of the disaster, through lack of initial care because medical facilities were hobbled, a growing number of people are dying from the physical and mental stress of staying at shelters, including through suicide.

Some families of those who have killed themselves have tried to hold plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) accountable through the legal system.

Last year, relatives of Hisashi Tarukawa won an out-of-court settlement after the 64-year-old hanged himself from a tree in a vegetable field when authorities banned the shipment of some farm produce from Fukushima.

“This is different from normal, natural disasters. People who live in shelters are forced to live there, away from their home towns and villages, where they lived for a long time,” Harada said. “They are forced to live the kinds of lives they are not used to.”