The governments of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, which were hit hardest by the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake, face the challenge of passing on the lessons of the disaster to younger workers.
As of Jan. 1, the proportion of prefectural government officials at departments under the control of their respective governors who were hired after the disaster 14 years ago stood at 43.9% in Iwate and 45.7% in Miyagi, while the figure was 48.6% as of April 1 last year in Fukushima.
Meanwhile, many prefectural officials who were involved in front-line operations in the immediate aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami are retiring, driving generational shifts at their respective workplaces.
Iwate and Miyagi have each compiled records and collections of proposals by prefectural government workers at the time of the disaster that serve as a disaster response guide for the current generation of officials.
Since fiscal 2021, the Iwate Prefectural Government has posted each month some of its proposal records on a special website used by prefectural workers. An official at the prefectural department responsible for reconstruction promotion said the initiative is aimed at "steadily passing on the lessons," as there are a growing number of government officials who have not experienced disaster response measures.
In March 2023, the Miyagi Prefectural Government published a collection of opinions of about 600 people who were involved in front-line operations in the aftermath of the disaster. Officials featured in the collection attend government employee training sessions as kataribe storytellers to share their stories about the disaster.
But the prefecture is struggling to ensure that their experiences are passed on as the number of people who can share such firsthand knowledge is expected to fall, a prefectural government official said.
Fukushima, which is continuing to grapple with the effects of the meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings' Fukushima No. 1 power plant following the earthquake, began training sessions in fiscal 2020 that include a visit by new prefectural government recruits to the Ukedo Elementary School Ruins, a facility in the town of Namie that is the prefecture's sole preserved disaster-hit structure.
However, the prefecture has not been able to record the disaster experiences of its officials, as it is busy tackling issues such as decommissioning work at the meltdown-stricken power plant, a prefectural government official said.
In the Miyagi capital of Sendai, city officials have formed a voluntary group to interview workers who dealt with the disaster to record their stories. At a group event last November, Emiko Okuyama, who was Sendai mayor at the time of the disaster, said that she read records compiled after the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in to work on disaster response.
"The (March 2011) disaster was unprecedented, but learning from the past gave me hope," Okuyama said.
Shosuke Sato, an associate professor at Tohoku University's International Research Institute of Disaster Science who specializes in the study of disaster folklore, said, "It is important to continue passing on (the lessons) in order to effectively carry out postdisaster recovery and reconstruction."
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