誰かが言わなきゃならない

1. Knowhow from experience

Meal delivery is announced one hour before the delivery actually starts.
People start to form a line at a corner on the ground floor. The line becomes
long with time. The end of the line can reach the upper floor, when the
delivery actually begins. The top waits for an hour. But once it starts, the delivery finishes in quarter of an hour by many (perhaps too many) volunteers.
In these days I wait and join the line when it starts moving ahead.
Yesterday I met with a former town office manager, my long year friend, and talked on a couple of topics concerned. He said he stays on the second floor. Such a first time union still happens here after one month of stay, as so many people are staying in a big building, and many ins-and-outs.
He is a single and retired last year. According to his explanation, he was in
the town office as a telephone operator on the day of evacuation (March 12). Learning that I needed five hours for evacuation, he said he left Tomioka-cho at 4:30 p.m. and arrived in Kawauchi-mura in only 22 minutes. He left Tomioka-cho after spending sufficient time for selecting the commodities to bring together, loading them on his car and everybody else had left.
In this emergency situation, the way in normal life for handling the situation is used by the prefectural government or the town office, so seems to him. In his view, more authorities should be transferred in an emergency to practical levels, and simplified logistics should be in place by trusting the residents and private sectors.
Retirees experienced in emergency measures should have been more recruited by the prefecture as well as the town/village, I thought.

2. Freedoms lost

Winter is leaving and some warmness is coming. Flowers are now seen around the Big Palette. One month in evacuation. While getting fed up with a feeling of how long such a life continues, another emotion comes up to me: Evacuation is what? How our life changed after the accidents at Fukushima Daiichi?
What difference do we have?
We take meals and sleep every day as the previous days, but not at our home. We can’t do what we want to do with our own household goods, or we can’t take what we want to eat. It sounds as if we are on leisure, but this is not the life we started on our own will. Athome we could spend a day on our own will as we liked. Oh yes, the accidents deprived us of freedoms. If unable to return home, we would lose our houses and all household goods. But that is not certain, yet. What we lost so far is freedoms.
Our constitution assures our freedoms. We never lose it unless we are imprisoned. The government instructed us to evacuate for protecting our health. But, in a sense, we are deprived of our fundamental human rights. In fact, there are some people who do not evacuate against the instruction and still remain in the evacuation zone on their own will.
To the mindset of evacuees, our evacuation is not caused by a natural disaster, but basically by a human disaster. Controlled access to our houses is different from the controlled access in the volcanic areas for safety protection from the eruptions. People here cannot stand the prolonged infringement of their human rights.

3. Temporary residences

Fukushima Prefecture decided to build in total 24,000 temporary houses, basically on the public land like school grounds. Concerns: Convenience for shopping, heating, quietness … Materials for building and workforce are not sufficiently available after earthquake and tsunami disasters.
No concerns in this regard about the rent-houses or apartments, adequately located, comfortable in living … They are readily available. A living environment of many people together in temporary houses, on the other hand, may cause stresses among the modernized people. Temporary houses are temporary.
Basically, they are consumables for one-time use. They may connote wasting money. Rent-houses and apartments are in the market more than adequate nationwide. Why can’t they be used? The agents and the owners may cooperate in discounting.
Weak people (aged family, those with no blood relatives, etc.) may be left behind if many healthy families leave for such residences (rent-houses or apartments). More staff workforce can be allocated for the weak people. Besides them, most families are healthy enough to live their independent lives. If they (me, too) remain to stay here with full cares, they may lose the spirit of independence.
While in the evacuation camp, they should share some roles to operate the evacuation life. That will help them for independent lives, once the evacuation ends.