ABSTRACT
On 11 March 2011, the Tohoku region of northern Honshu, Japan, was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake with its epicentre off the Pacific coast. Some 30 to 40 minutes later, a series of massive tsunami waves up to 40 metres in height engulfed the coastal region (Mori et al. 2011), resulting in a total of 19,238 people dead or missing and severe damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, located in the coastal town of Futaba. A loss of electricity needed to power cooling systems caused subsequent hydrogen explosions and meltdowns of three of the Daiichi nuclear reactors over the period of 12 to 15 March, spewing clouds of radioactive material into the air and eventually forcing the compulsory evacuation of 113,000 residents in 11 nearby municipalities. Later, their numbers were augmented by voluntary evacuees from other parts of Fukushima Prefecture, particularly parents with young children, who were worried about the potential health impacts of continued radiation. Thus, although the total number of Tohoku evacuees decreased rapidly in the months following the disaster as tsunami evacuees returned to their communities, the number of nuclear disaster refugees rose for a period of about two years, peaking at 160,000 (McCurry 2013) before declining again to 126,000 in September 2014 (Government of Japan 2014) due, in part, to people returning to zones where evacuation orders had been lifted.
