Feature: Suffering still rampant 5 years on in tsunami-hit Tohoku region

Those who were evacuated after the monstrous earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's Tohoku area, or northeastern part of the island country, never imagined they'd be staying in temporary housing five years after the disaster, fighting against loneliness and diseases as public housing projects funded by the government are delayed meaning unbearable costs for those without work.

A Tohoku regional newspaper, the Kahoku Shimpo, released a survey last week showing that only 23.5 percent of governmental public housing projects in Minamisanriku town in Miyagi Prefecture have been completed as of January, and the number in Ishinomaki city and Kesennuma city are just 38.4 percent and 21.2 percent respectively.

While in Fukushima Prefecture, towns as Futaba, Namie and Okuma are just like "ghost towns," as entire populations there were evacuated due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.

"My son built a new house with loans just one year before the earthquake. The new house was washed away in the disaster," Toshiko Saito, a staff member at the Ishinomaki Community and Information Center, told Xinhua.

"He has his own family so he couldn't rely on temporary housing and had to build another house and is in more and more debt."

"He now lives a very hard life, he has to repay two loans," Saito said, expressing her hope that the government could pay a little attention to the "double loan" issue so as to somehow ease the burdens of the sufferers.

In Minamisanriku, the government marked the coastal area affected by the tsunami as "dangerous housing land" and purchased the land from owners at 70 percent of the average market price, said Keiko Sasaki, head of the Shizugawa branch of the Minamisanriku Support Center for Disaster Sufferers.

Sasaki told Xinhua that the government has been currently offering new land on highland areas at average market prices.

"That means for those sufferers who nearly lost everything in the disaster, they can ill afford to buy new land. Even if they could afford the price for a piece of new land, they have no more money to build a new house."

She added that in Japan, neither people aged at or above 60 nor those who only have part time jobs could get loans from banks. However, in Minamisanriku, most people still living in the town are the grey-haired and part-time workers.

Sasaki lost her house in the disaster and has been living in temporary housing for about five years. She said the temporary housing is noisy and she has no privacy.

She said some seniors are suffering from ill health; particularly Alzheimer's disease patients who are getting worse.

"In Minamisanriku, the rent for public housing will be cut in half in the first five years, and then the rent will be full price. If those forced into public housing have jobs, the rent is calculated based on their salaries. High income earners need to pay more," Sasaki complained, and said it meant the displaced prefer to stay in the temporary housing as they don't have enough money to move.

Reconstruction work in Minamisanriku has made little progress as the land was soaked in post-tsunami seawater for so long that it's too soft to build new buildings or roads on. Huge earthwork is necessary in order to solidify the land, but it will take a long time.

Kinya Konno, in his 70s, lives in a temporary housing complex in Ofunato city in Iwate Prefecture and assumed that he would only needs to stay in the small room for three years.

"I never thought I'd be living here for nearly five years as the development of the highland has been delayed again and again."

Konno refuses to move into the public housing as, on one hand, he needs to pay the rent, and on the other hand, he wants his wife to open a new hair salon at his new house so that they can have a better income.

He said he will get a piece of new land in August and plans to get a loan to build a house, despite already having a hefty existing loan to repay.

In Kesennuma city, Yumiko Kannachi, an owner of a tea shop, also expressed her worries about the future.

Five years ago, the tsunami washed away her shop and she spent 18 days stranded in her car in a nearby mountainous area.

She has now built a new house using a deposit on her parents' land but her business is not doing well.

"Many locals left the city, and my sales went down by about 50 percent. There were many people like me who had their own businesses but they gave up, because they didn't see any hope here, they worried about the future," Kannachi said.

Kannachi's shop is in a temporary housing facility which will be dismantled in August as a new public housing project will soon be completed.

"But my old shop is being used by the government on a construction field and they will give it back to me two years later. What should I do until then?" she asked.

Katsunobu Sakurai, mayor of Minamisoma in Fukushima, expressed his concerns, saying he worries that the stadium construction in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympic Games will continue to get more government attention and reconstruction work in the disaster-affected areas, therefore, will be forgotten.

Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo last month, he said he personally doesn't oppose the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but he urged the government to find a balance between the Olympics and the revitalization of the Tohoku area.

"I think the number of cranes in Tokyo now is more than those in Minamisoma," the mayor said. Enditem