Year after tsunami, battles rage in Japan over how, where to rebuild

ISHINOMAKI, Japan -- Fujii Mie is still haunted by the ?black wall?? of water she saw in the rearview mirror as she raced to safety at a nearby supermaket.

Peering out the store?s window hours later, Mie helplessly watched her house float away, one of almost 54,000 Ishinomaki homes ? 72.6 percent of all structures in this port city ? destroyed in the Great East Japan Earthquake.

?My heart still breaks for my people,?? said Mei, 52, who now lives in an evacuation shelter. ?It?s a very sad feeling.??

Japan will pause Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary of the disaster ? a massive 9.0 earthquake that spawned a monster tsunami and triggered a nuclear meltdown.

All told, almost 20,000 people were killed, 124,000 were displaced and hundreds of thousands of buildings destroyed. The government estimated damage at more than $300 billion, making it the world?s costliest natural disaster.

?In some cases, towns just vanished, swallowed by the tsunami and swept away,?? said Yoshio Ando, a counselor with the government?s new Reconstruction Agency. ?It was tragic.?

A year later, thousands of evacuees remain in shelters, and coastal cities like Ishinomaki ? founded in the fourth century ? are still struggling to remove tons of debris and agree on innovative recovery plans.

The Reconstruction Agency and city governments in affected areas are calling for resettlements of thousands of people from low-lying communities to higher ground ? in the shadows of surrounding mountains, in some cases ? as part of controversial plans to rebuild ?smarter.??

?What we need is a different concept of how to rebuild those communities,?? Ando said. ?We have to rebuild tsunami-resistant communities with all the necessary services, from schools to welfare. We don?t have time to waste and we need to accelerate the speed of this reconstruction.??

But Mei and many fellow evacuees said they feel like bystanders in discussions about their future. City officials, they add, have been slow to respond to their issues, which include compensation for their losses and a desire to rebuild close to their destroyed homes.

?This city has done nothing for us,?? Mei said one afternoon inside a small trailer that serves as a community center. ?I can?t trust them. This city looks down at us.?

In a downtown high-rise, city officials said they want to work with evacuees, but some aspects of the reconstruction ? moving some residents farther inland, among them ? are nonnegotiable.

?Right now, we?re planning two new towns away from the coast and we?re going to make those towns better,?? said Yoshinori Sato, assistant manager of the reconstruction office, showing off large multi-colored maps with the city?s plans. ?We plan to move people who live in this blue area [near the water] to the new towns.?

But Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told journalists last weekend that the rebuilding should take into consideration the concerns of local residents.

?When it comes to reconstruction in areas seriously hit by the tsunami, there is debate over whether they have to move to higher ground,?? he said. ?I think that local residents have to discuss and decide ... and time is needed for that.??

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/11/2688062/year-after-tsunami-battles-rage.html

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