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Even with the massive cleanup, only about one-fifth of the 6,200 displaced residents of Iitate are willing to return, according to a recent head count by village officials.

4 Years After Fukushima Nuclear Calamity, Japanese Divided on Whether to Return By MARTIN FACKLER, NYT< AUG. 8, 2015 ITATE, Japan — For four years, an eerie quiet has pervaded the clusters of farmhouses and terraced rice paddies of this mountainous village, emptied of people after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 25 miles away, spewed radiation over a wide swath of northeastern Japan……….

some evacuees have cheered this chance to return, many more have rejected it. Thousands from Iitate and elsewhere have joined lawsuits or organized groups to oppose the plan by the government, which they say is trying to force residents to go back despite radiation levels that are still far above normal.

They accuse Tokyo of repeating a pattern from the early days of the disaster of putting residents at risk by trying to understate the danger from the accident. They say the central government is trying to achieve its own narrow political interests, such as restarting the nation’s powerful nuclear industry, or assuring the world that Tokyo is safe enough to host the Summer Olympics in 2020.

“If the national officials think it is so safe, then they should come and live here,” said Kenichi Hasegawa, a former dairy farmer in Iitate who has organized more than 3,000 fellow evacuees — almost half the village’s pre-disaster population — to oppose the return plan. “The government just wants to proclaim that the nuclear accident is over, and shift attention to the Olympics.”

This grass-roots rebellion of sorts underscores a deep disconnect between victims in Fukushima and the government in Tokyo, a schism that has plagued Japan’s response to one of history’s worst nuclear disasters.

While the government has undertaken a vast and costly cleanup to undo the effects of the accident and allow residents to return, many evacuees reject this course, complaining it was chosen without consulting them.

In fact, polls show a majority do not even want to go back. In a telling move in a country where litigation is relatively rare, more than 10,000 have joined some 20 class-action lawsuits to demand more compensation so they can afford to choose for themselves whether to return, or to build new lives elsewhere.

This has become an increasingly pressing issue for the tens of thousands of evacuees whose lives remain on hold, living in temporary housing and making ends meet with monthly stipends of about $800 per adult from the nuclear plant’s operator………

the plan has been met with skepticism, and resistance.

A survey last month by the pronuclear newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun showed that eight of the mayors of the 11 evacuated towns dislike the 2017 return date, though some said they had no choice but to accept it. Other mayors, such as Tamotsu Baba of the town of Namie, have offered alternative proposals that push back the return date, and offer more financial support to those who do not want to return.

One of the biggest complaints about the new return plan is that it is intended to force evacuees to return by cutting off compensation payments. A provision in the new plan calls for ending monthly payments by March 2018 in favor of subsidies to help them return. Many evacuees say cutting off the monthly payments would compel them to return, since many, particularly those over 50 or so, have failed to find new livelihoods since the disaster.

“This is all being done coercively, without listening to the desires of the victims,” said Izutaro Managi, a lawyer who is handling one of the lawsuits, filed on behalf of more than 4,000 people, mostly residents of Fukushima, seeking more compensation……..

In Iitate, a small farming community once proclaimed one of the most beautiful villages in Japan before the accident, the narrow valleys are filled with workers scraping off the top two inches of soil, which is then put into black bags that are stacked into man-made hills.

Across the entire evacuation zone, workers have already filled 2.9 million bags, which will be stored for at least the next 30 years at toxic waste sites that the government is building inside the zone.

Even with the massive cleanup, only about one-fifth of the 6,200 displaced residents of Iitate are willing to return, according to a recent head count by village officials………. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/world/asia/japan-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-iitate-return-plan.html?_r=0