The March 11 massive earthquake and tsunami and the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant at one point made some 450,000 people, mostly from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, homeless. Now some 170,000 people are staying at temporary evacuation shelters. An encouraging development is taking place among some local governments in areas not affected by the disasters. They are offering to accept evacuees from northeastern Japan.
Not only prefectures near the devastated areas, such as Akita, Yamagata and Niigata, but also more distant prefectures, such as Okinawa and Saga, are inviting evacuees to stay in their areas. Katashina village in Gunma Prefecture, with a population of about 5,000, has accepted some 920 people from Minami Soma city in Fukushima Prefecture, who were forced to evacuate their homes due to the nuclear power plant crisis.
The regional federation of Kyoto, Osaka and seven other prefectures in the Kansai region is ready to accept tens of thousands of evacuees. It says that it will make efforts to enable them to maintain communities in their new environment.