MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) – Almost half of families evacuated from disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture have been split up and nearly 70 percent of all evacuees feel distressed and frustrated, according to the results of a survey released by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper Tuesday.
According to the survey, only 45 percent of families continued to live together after the evacuation, while 49 percent said they had split up and currently live in two or more different locations.
Research also showed that families were forced to separate over a number of reasons such as high radiation levels and locations of new schools and work offices.
The survey unveiled that after the fourth year of living in temporary housing, Fukushima evacuees feel physically and mentally distressed with over 50 percent saying that they do not enjoy their life as they used to and suffer from insomnia. More than 40 percent added that they are frustrated and depressed, while 35 percent claimed a chronic illness had worsened since they left Fukushima.
The survey among 62,812 households in January and February was the first conducted by the Prefecture authorities in almost four years of evacuation.
Earlier this month, residents of areas surrounding Fukushima started returning to their houses following a lift of an evacuation order and a drop in radiation levels.
In March 2011, Japan was hit by a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, claiming more than 15,000 lives and causing a number of explosions at the Fukushima plant. In what has been dubbed the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, three of the plant’s reactors underwent a partial meltdown as radiation leaked into the atmosphere, soil and seawater.
