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Contamination and community support in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster
Koji Itonaga
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published online 19 June 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0096340214539861
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FeatureContamination and community
support in the aftermath of the
Fukushima disaster

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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DOI: 10.1177/0096340214539861
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Koji Itonaga

Abstract
The Japanese village of Iitate received some of the highest radiation exposures resulting from the disaster at the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, particularly on March 15, 2011. Iitate, which had previously been amodel eco-village, is still heavily contaminated. The villageÕs abundance of forested area not only makes
decontamination difficult but may also cause re-contamination of areas after they are cleaned up. Before theaccident, many households in Iitate had multiple generations living under one roof, but many families wereforced to split up when they evacuated. Villagers are now living in dispersed housing or in temporary units
constructed after the accident. Many villagers, particularly young families, have given up hope of returning to
Iitate anytime soon. It will take decades for the radioactivity to naturally decay. In the meantime, the author
proposes creating new settlements so that villagers can rebuild their lives and sense of community while
retaining the right to return to Iitate. Villages torn apart by tsunami damage are being allowed to move tohigher ground as entire communities; the author argues that Iitate and other villages devastated by radiation
should have similar rights.

Keywords
contamination, evacuation, Fukushima, Iitate Village, radioactive, right of refuge, right of returnn 2010, Iitate was named one of themost beautiful villages in Japan. Its
landscapes of forested mountains andgently rolling farmland were home toabout 6,100 people, and the village wasa model for integrating ecology, architecture, and design. The people of Iitate
were planning their community aroundthe theme of a ÒMadei life,Ó using a wordthat in the local dialect means Òrespectfully and carefully.Ó That all changed on
March 11, 2011.

I

Iitate is no longer a pastoral village
living in harmony with its natural
surroundings. The 2011 accident at
the Tokyo Electric Power Company(TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Station spread radioactive contamination to a number of surrounding villages, including IitateÑcenteredapproximately 40 kilometers to thenorthwest. On the evening of March 15,
2011, rain and snow fell on Iitate and contaminated the village with radioactive

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 0(0)material from the nuclear accident.
With no evacuation instructions fromthe government, villagers who lived 30
kilometers or more from the nuclear
facility continued to be exposed to radioactivity. Evacuation orders for Iitate
finally came on April 22, but by then villagers had already received some of thehighest exposures resulting from thenuclear accident.
With colleagues at Nihon University
and the nonprofit organization Ecology
Archiscape, I had worked to support thevillage administration for around 20
years. Through these pre-existing connections, we were able to form the
Iitate Village Support Team only fivedays after the disaster. Since then, we
have worked with local government
and villagers to provide refuge andrecovery advice to the village, carry out
radioactivity and public opinion surveys,
and develop a long-term plan for copingwith the disaster.
Because Iitate still has a lot of contamination, many residentsÑyoung families
in particularÑhave given up hope of
returning to the village in the foreseeable
future. It will take decades for the radioactivity in Iitate to naturally decay.
Forest occupies more than three-fourthsof the village area, making decontamination difficult, and many villagers do nottrust the decontamination efforts thatare currently under way. Since immediately after the disaster, I have argued
for a long-term plan that includes creating some new settlements where villagers could safely rebuild their lives
while retaining the right to return to
Iitate. Such a plan would grant villagers
dual residency in both Iitate and the
new village, enabling the communityÑ
and individual families within itÑto
stay together.

A model village
Iitate sits an average of 450 meters above
sea level, so it was not directly affectedby the 2011 tsunami. The village has atotal area of about 230 square kilometers
and is nearly 75 percent forested. Whenthe earthquake struck, the population
was approximately 6,100 people, livingin around 1,700 households. In the years
before the disaster, villagers, researchers, and government officials had
worked together to create a sustainable
and ecological community.
For the period from 1995 to 2004, thelocal government made a 10-year Planfor the Quality of Life in Village, andgave every settlement within the municipality ¥10 million to carry out improvements and activities related to the plan
(Iitate Village, 1995). For 2005 to 2016, a
new plan was prepared around thetheme ÒMadei life,Ó aiming at a harmonious life with nature and agriculture (Iitate
Village, 2005). In 2008, the local government began to implement plans to produce energy locally, beginning with abiomass-fueled boiler in a nursing home.
I worked with a team that designed theMadei Living Center, an energy-saving
model eco-house. Before the disaster,
we had expected that the facility would
be run by a newly established community-based nonprofit organization within
five years.

Radioactive contamination
On the evening of March 15, 2011, after the
air radiation dose in front of the village
office was measured at 44.7 microsieverts per hour, my colleagues and I
urged IitateÕs mayor to hasten the evacuation of children and pregnant women.
(For comparison, a single chest x-ray

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Itonaga3

delivers a dose of 50 to 100 microsieverts.) Some villagers were evacuated,but by the end of March they had returnedÑafter a team of radioactivity
experts commissioned by the villageauthorities and led by Syunichi Yamashita, vice president of Nagasaki University and an expert on thyroid cancers
associated with the Chernobyl accident,
advised that it was safe to do so.
The Iitate support team cooperated
with Tetsuji Imanaka of Kyoto University, a nuclear energy researcher andmember of the Nuclear Safety ResearchGroup (an anti-nuclear power group), to
conduct an aerial dose rate investigationand soil analysis across the whole village
area on March 28 and 29, 2011. In thesouthern part of the village, closest to
the nuclear power plant, the survey
found radioactivity values of 30 microsieverts per hour (Imanaka et al., 2012).
This level is comparable to contamination measured after Chernobyl. The
team presented these unsettling findings
to the village authorities, but the mayor
refused to make them public, so the Imanaka team published them openly, andour support team also published themon the Ecology Archiscape website(Iitate Village Area Radioactive Contamination Investigation Team, 2011). The
Imanaka team and our support teamjointly organized the Iitate-mura Society
for Radioecology (IISORA; http://iitatesora.net/) study group in 2012 andare cooperating.
In April 2011, we requested urgent
evacuation of Iitate residents and decontamination measures for the whole village (Iitate Village Support Team, 2011).
The central government had only called
for the evacuation of residents living
within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima
nuclear plant; residents living between

20 and 30 kilometers from the nuclear
power plant were told to stay at home
but indoors. On April 22, 2011, the government designated the 20-kilometer radiusaround the nuclear plant as a restricted
area and prohibited entry except forpeople engaged in emergency response.
At the same time, the government designated Iitate and other highly contaminated areas outside the 20-kilometerzone as Òdeliberate evacuation areasÓ
and Òevacuation-prepared areas in caseof emergency.Ó As of May 2014, residents
were still not permitted to live anywherein Iitate. On July 17, 2012, the village wasdivided into three zones (Òzone in preparation for the lifting of the evacuation
order,Ó Òrestricted residence area,Ó andÒdifficult-to-return zone.Ó). The sectionof Iitate closest to the nuclear plant is anarea where it is expected that residents
will have difficulties in returning for five
years or more (Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry, 2013).
The central government asked
Fukushima Medical University to
conduct an initial exposure survey ofresidents of Fukushima Prefecture, todetermine how much radiation theyreceived during the first four months
after March 11, 2011. Using the publisheddata from the survey, Imanaka calculated
that the amount of external exposure for
Iitate villagers was about 3.6 millisieverts (or 3,600 microsieverts) on average(Imanaka, 2013). However, the resultsfrom the Imanaka team, together withan investigation that I assisted in thesummer of 2013, suggest that the exposure of Iitate villagers during those first
fourth months was 7 millisieverts on
average, almost double the governmentÕs
estimate (Imanaka, 2013).
Our July 2013 investigation studied
contamination inside homes. In Iitate,

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 0(0)we measured five houses with different
levels of radioactive contamination. We
found values ranging from 0.2 to 3.8
microsieverts per hour. The averagevalue of the ambient radiation dose rate
was 0.7 microsieverts per hour on thefloor of the first story, and the dose generally rose as we climbed higher inside
the houses, reaching an average of 2.0
microsieverts per hour on the ceiling of
the second story.
I took measurements of radioactive
cesium inside and outside a house thatwas decontaminated as a model by thegovernment in 2012, and found contamination of outdoor topsoil that had been
replaced after the decontamination. Thissuggests that re-contamination from thesurrounding land and forests may, insome locations, cause radioactivity toreturn nearly to previous levelsÑnot
only outdoors but also in the interiorof homes. I examined the radioactive
cesium contained in dust on the furnitureand ceiling of the house, however, andfound that the amount of radioactive
cesium in this dust is relatively small,so dust is not the cause of the increased
indoor radiation dose.
Despite this radioactive contamination, villagers are still allowed to returnfor short visits. There is an urgent need toinvestigate the pollution status of all
housing in the village, decontaminate
houses outside and inside, and repair the
housing for radiation protection. Afterthese measures are implemented, such
short visits would be safer.
Immediately after the nuclear accident, the Iitate Village Support Team
collected donations and set up a support
room that operated in Fukushima City
for the first year. Currently, relations
between the support team and the
local government are strained overdifferences in perceived radiation risks.
However, the team continues to conduct
surveys and to provide data to villageauthorities, villagers, and the media.
The teamÕs support activities since 2011
also include:. Addressing radioactivity and healthrisks by offering study sessions,
supporting the publication ofrecord books that were distributed
to villagers by the local nonprofit
group Makenedo Iitate during theinitial exposure period, and proposing radioactivity defense measures
to reduce exposure in the homes ofreturning villagers.
. Helping villagers cope with refugee
life by organizing public symposiums about life reconstruction,
spring and summer camps for children and families, and a self-helpgroup for concerned mothers.
. Holding workshops to develop plansfor construction of a new settlement
and a dual-residence system thatwould allow evacuated villagers
and their descendants to live in temporary communities until radiationin Iitate has dropped to safe levels.
. Supporting cultural activities suchas the establishment of art shops,
community vegetable gardens, anda villagersÕ group that seeks to maintain IitateÕs traditional food culture.

Divided communities and families
The 1,715 households that lived in Iitate
before the disaster had fractured into
3,094 households by June 2012, andthis household separation is still continuing. Before the accident, many Iitate
villagers lived in houses with multiple

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Itonaga5

generations under the same roof. Afterthe accident, 90 percent of Iitate households evacuated to Fukushima City andother municipalities within Fukushima
Prefecture. About 20 percent of thedownsized households created by thedisaster now occupy nine temporary
housing sites in Fukushima City or
cities close to Iitate, and another 50 percent live in dispersed houses and apartments. Many young families are living inapartments in Fukushima City paid forby the prefecture. Many elderly Iitate
residents, however, were assigned tothe temporary housing areas, because
these older residents evacuated later
than the young families, after temporary
facilities were constructed.
In early October 2011, the Iitate support team, supported by Makenedo
Iitate, carried out a public opinion
survey of villagers in temporary housing
units. Forty percent of the respondents
said they Òwant to come back to the villageÓ and 70 percent Òmight move outside the village.Ó Some elderly people
said they did not want to return to a lifein which children and grandchildren
could not join them because of uncertain
health risks. They wanted to live with
their families and preferred to improvetheir present situation, away fromtheir old homes, rather than become
separated households.
The team carried out further surveys
of villagers for two years after the accident. In October 2012, we surveyed allvillagers and obtained responses from1,366 people. More than 38 percent
agreed that they would return homewhen the radiation levels dropped to 1
millisievert per yearÑthe normal background levelÑbut 21.9 percent said thatthey would Ònever return home.Ó Only
2.4 percent agreed with the national

government position that it would besafe to return at radiation levels below
20 millisieverts per year. What villagers
want is a place where they can live inpeace instead of as evacuees.
As to the question of how to decide
when to return, the villagers indicatedthat they want some self-determinationon this issue. Nearly 38 percent said thatthe decision to return should be decided
by villagersÕ vote, and a further 33 percent said that the decision should be in
consultation with villagers; only 12.4 percent said the local government should
decide. If evacuation is prolonged, 37.9
percent wanted to continue living in theevacuation housing, 30.3 percent wanted
to own a new home outside the village,and 17.3 percent wanted to live in new
public housing for disaster recovery. Villagers have come to expect a range ofmeasures from authorities: compensation negotiations with TEPCO and thenational government; long-term healthmanagement measures, especially forchildren; thorough decontamination of
the site; and creation of a reconstruction
plan in close consultation with villagers.

Decontamination progress
The government-controlled decontamination of Iitate is proceeding slowly.
As of January 2014, 4 percent of agricultural land and 9 percent of residential
land in the village had been officially decontaminated. The surrounding forest
within 20 meters of residential land will
be decontaminated, but the expectedcompletion has been deferred until 2016.
Immediately after decontamination,
the radiation dose is reduced, but villagers have begun to understand that,after a while, the radioactive contamination may return. By the spring of 2014,

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 0(0)about 400 households seemed to betrying to get houses of their own in themunicipalities where they found refuge. Young families, in particular, are
beginning to demand stable lives inthese refuges.
Although contamination measured inand around Iitate homes declined bymore than 50 percent during the twoyears after the accident, 75 percent of
Iitate is forested, and these areas areheavily contaminated with cesium-137,
which has a half-life of 30 years. Decontaminating forests is not easy and should
not be given priority by village authorities, in the support teamÕs view. Instead,priority should be given to evacuating
residents to safe places outside the village, and building new settlements
there. The government should acknowledge that it is only safe to return in thelong run, when radiation levels havedecreased sufficiently.

Community resilience andlong-term revival
In 1986, after the nuclear disaster in
Chernobyl, the Kremlin enforced anevacuation plan with an iron hand inareas exposed to more than 5 millisieverts per year. In Japan, on the other
hand, evacuation measures have been
weak. The prospect of successfully
decontaminating a heavily forested areasuch as Iitate is slight. Some wisdom andadjustment are necessary to acknowledge the long half-lives of some radioactive elements in relation to human lifespans. Currently, the Iitate support teamwould rather improve the resilience offamilies and the community than toattempt a futile decontamination process that might further frustrate survivors if it is inadequate.

What is needed is a project to build
new villages located away from radiationand close to employment opportunities.
Each village should include a school, anursery school, a space for festivals, ashared farm, and factory and market
spaceÑwhere it will be possible for villagers to re-create and develop both life
and work. This unprecedented situation,in which whole communities have torecover from a nuclear disaster, requires
a new set of standards.
When I first proposed the creation ofsome new small villages, immediately
after the accident, villagers and villageauthorities showed little interest. After
three years, some villagers are interested
in this proposal. However, the top priority for many villagers is finding their own
homes. It takes time and effort to develop
new community residential areas, so villagers hesitate to get involved. They
expect the local government to take thelead on planning, but local governments
are giving priority to decontamination.
The official Iitate plan is for a thorough decontamination in the village,
development of a central community
center, public shops for tourism, andpublic housing for returning villagers.
The Iitate village authorities intend tocreate a new Òsmart villageÓ in the western part of Iitate. However, the opinion
surveys clearly show that villagers, especially younger families, have given up
hope of returning to the village anytime
soon. They prefer to live together with
their family members, other fellow villagers, and friends somewhere where they
feel safe. Village authorities should
develop an alternative revival plan withthe villagers, and prepare some small,
new alternative settlements elsewhere.
I have been supporting villagers
who began operating shared vegetable

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Itonaga7

gardens on deserted farms near theevacuation apartments and temporary
housing. Some former residents of Iitatewish to create new residential areas near
their farmland in the western part of
Fukushima City, and I have been involved
in several talks about this immigration
plan since 2013. However, the plan has
not been implemented yet because ofurban planning and policy issues inFukushima City. Also, there is no support
from Iitate authorities for an immigra
tion plan.
A rural area in Date City, where thereis temporary housing of Iitate villagers,
is also a possible location for a new residential development. The Date City
planning authorities are willing to discuss the idea, but developing a new residential area without the cooperation of
Iitate authorities is problematic.

The three rights
Villagers displaced by the Fukushima disaster should have three rights: the right ofrefuge, the right to a new village outside
the contaminated area, and the right ofreturn to their original village in the
future. The national government andTEPCO should negotiate the location ofan alternative village, settle land leasearrangements, and pay for the buildingof houses. Villagers should be able tohave two residentÕs cards: one for Iitate
and one for the evacuee community.
The alternative village should be built
as a model eco-village, based on renewable energy and traditional agricultureÑa ÒMadei life.Ó When villagers
return to Iitate, this temporary village
could become an ecological education
center. In the meantime, the central government and TEPCO should lease theradioactively polluted Iitate land for 30

to 50 years and should pay the villagers
lease charges. When the villagers areable to return, either after successful
and permanent decontamination orwhen the natural half-life of radioactive
elements has reduced the radiation tosafe levels, the government should duly
return the land rights to the villagers or
their descendants. The central government should organize land-use meetings
with the village administration and carryout decontamination and managementof the land, and not turn these areas
into dumping grounds for radioactive
waste. Temporary visits to the village
should be allowed for managing homes
and properties, visiting family graves, orholding traditional festivals.
Japanese villages that were swept
away by the 2011 tsunami are developing
plans to move uphill, a little farther awayfrom the sea. I also support those plans,
which have earned the cooperation of
local administrations and the central
government. New homes are being constructed for tsunami victims, and it isexpected that residential areas will bein place in 2015. Residents who were directly affected by the tsunami have
won immigration rights at the community level.
In contrast, Iitate villagers who wereradioactively contaminated by the
nuclear accident have not won the rightto immigrate to a safer place as a community. Land-use planning and public works
for resilience must change to make thispossible. The villagers of Iitate, whose
homes and businesses were contaminated through no fault of their own,
have a right to rebuild their lives together
with their families and neighbors. This
right should be incorporated in futureplanning, so that people whose lives areprofoundly affected by a nuclear accident

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 0(0)can support each other and reclaim theircommunities.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the villagers of Iitate, the Iitate government office, members of Ecology Archiscape, myfellow researchers, citizens who contributed money
in support of this work, and the students in my laboratory at Nihon University.

Funding
This research received some grant funding from the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology in Japan; the National Federation ofWorkers and Consumers Insurance Cooperatives;and financial support to the nonprofit organization
Ecology Archiscape (www.ecology-archiscape.org).

www.ecology-archiscape.org/eas/english/pdf/
20110417AnUrgentRequest.htm.
Imanaka T (2013) Assessment of the initial radiation
exposure to residents in Iitate village up to evacuation after the Fukushima-1 NPP accident. Presentation to the Nuclear Safety Research Association,
December 4. Available at: www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/
NSRG/etc/13-12-4NSRA_E.pdf.
Imanaka T, Endo S, Sugai M, et al. (2012) Early radiation survey of Iitate village, which was heavily
contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi accident,
conducted on 28 and 29 March 2011. Health Physics
102(6): 680”686.
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (2013)
Areas to which evacuation orders have been
issued. August 7. Available at: www.meti.go.jp/
english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pdf/
20130807_01.pdf.

References

Author biography

Iitate Village (1995) The 4th Comprehensive Plan for
the Quality of Life in Village.
Iitate Village (2005) The 5th Comprehensive Plan for
the Quality of Life in Village. Available at:www.vill.iitate.fukushima.jp/groups/kikaku/
jousetsu/gojisoukeikaku_vill.html.
Iitate Village Area Radioactive Contamination Investigation Team (2011) Interim report on radiation
survey in Iitate Village area conducted on March
28th and 29th. April 4. Available at: www.ecologyarchiscape.org/eas/english/pdf/Iitate-interimreport110404.pdf.
Iitate Village Support Team (2011) An urgent request
concerning the set up of the planned evacuation
zones for Iitate Village and related areas. Letter toPrime Minister Naoto Kan. April 17. Available at:

Koji Itonaga is a professor of engineering,architecture, and city-rural planning in the College of Bioresource Sciences at Nihon University in Fujisawa City, Japan. He is president of
the nonprofit organization Ecology Archiscape,which integrates architecture and landscapedesign with local ecosystems, history, art, andculture. Itonaga began working on sustainable
development with Iitate Village in Fukushima
Prefecture nearly 20 years ago. With colleagues
at Nihon University and Ecology Archiscape, heformed an Iitate support team only five days
after the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake andtsunami.

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