Family Strategy for Evacuees and Possible Support in the Destination Community

Abstract

The main body of this article describes the activities of “Kobe Pocket Net,” a network of not-for-profit organizations that was established to support families affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami and nuclear crisis. The authors thereby examine the problems that mothers who have evacuated from disaster-hit communities to Kobe, at an approximate distance of 800 km, face as individuals and as members of a family, together with their strategies. The article also examines how not-for-profit organizations in the destination community can support them.
The result shows that mothers have been actively trying to transform their difficult structural conditions with help from “communities.” It also suggests that it is important to consider the multiplicity of family boundaries and moreover the multiplicity of the scope of a strategy including “communities.”
It is also revealed that a network of not-for-profit organizations that existed before the disaster played an important role in connecting mothers who came from the same area as each other, as well as in connecting them to a new community.