Mixed Feelings about the Support for Disaster Victims in Fukushima: Based on a Survey in the Municipality Have Accepted Nuclear Evacuees

Abstract

Five years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. A survey by Iwaki Meisei University (2014) shows that some residents of Iwaki city understand that Japanese government should do utmost hospitable support for Fukushima nuclear evacuees, but they feel envious of it. However, they have mixed feelings about the support for disaster victims. In this paper, I focus on feelings of residents in the municipality have accepted nuclear evacuees in Fukushima. Using a public opinion survey in Fukushima city, I tried to confirm whether Fukushima city is similar. The result showed that the majority answered "the support for nuclear evacuees by Japanese government is enough", and 38.2% of respondents had mixed feelings. And it was found that the resident of Fukushima city who had dissatisfaction with the reconstruction policy, tended to had mixed feelings. Furthermore, Fukushima was higher in the ratio of residents with mixed feelings than Sendai. Most previous studies paid attention to the vulnerable people and ignored the non-suffering residents who had lived in the disaster-stricken area. Generally speaking, the majority of the suffering municipality (or the municipality which have accepted nuclear evacuees) is the non-victim. Majority rule is a basic principle of democracy, so we should pay attention to the majority when we research on policy making in the suffering area.