Making difficult choices slowly rebuilding to the Japan - Wall Street Journal

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Associated Press Refugees at a sports-arena-turned-evacuation-center in Koriyama, Japan. Some say they are frustrated there is no clear end in sight to their stays.

KESENNUMA, Japan—Jun Koizumi's family ran an eyeglass shop on a main street here?for the past 82 years, until tsunami waves ripped through town last month, leaving a trail of gutted buildings and wreckage. Now to get by he sells snacks to passersby from the remains of his store.

His inventory: Three cans of Campbell's soup, a few containers of tea and canned coffee and some?hand-packed lunches made by a friend, including fried noodles with vegetables selling for about $2.50 each.

Five weeks after Japan's worst disaster in decades, families in devastated towns like Kesennuma are looking for ways to move on. But many are still waiting for guidance from government officials about how and where to rebuild, and how to pay for it.

It isn't much of a substitute for the family business, which now is reduced to a?muddy patient's chair, an eye?chart leaned up against the wall, and a few drawers filled with?office?supplies. The walls of the building are intact, but they slid sideways across the foundation when waves rose nearly to the ceiling. There's no electricity or water yet.

"I'd like to start again," said Mr. Koizumi, 45 years old, as his wife and two children stood nearby.?But he doesn't really know how because he doesn't have the money. "I want to wait for further support and details before I make a plan," he said.

Five weeks after Japan's worst disaster in decades, families are moving beyond the shock and desperation that followed the March 11 tsunami and looking for ways to go forward.

But many are hitting a wall as they wait for more guidance from government officials about how and where to rebuild, and how to pay for it. Key elements of the recovery effort, including clearing the mountains of rubble, are bogging down in some areas and further delaying the process, while more complex questions about the region's future are coming to the fore. In some cities, including Kesennuma, officials are discouraging residents from rebuilding in hard-hit areas while they debate how best to use the land—and how to make sure it is safe in the future.

In some areas, there are still so many missing bodies to recover that officials are realizing it could be months or even more than a year before serious reconstruction can begin. For the families ready to rebuild, there is little or no land left now that large tsunami-smashed areas are effectively off-limits for development.

Frustrations are becoming more evident in evacuation centers and elsewhere, raising the prospect that government officials who drew praise for early disaster-relief efforts—in contrast to their handling of Japan's crippled nuclear-power plant— could face growing criticism from disaster survivors if more progress isn't seen soon.

"Everybody can feel that missing persons are a first priority, and we need to work on that," said Tsutomu Nakai, administrative chief of the chamber of commerce in the nearby city of Rikuzentakata, which also was hit badly. "But we were left alive, and we have to keep going?to take responsibility for the people who are still living," and that means rebuilding quickly, he said. ????

"I know this was an unimaginable disaster, so it's hard for anyone to take [sufficient] measures," adds Masaaki Tobai, vice mayor of the smashed city of Otsuchi, three hours up the coast. "But I think it's a little slow," he said. "We're waiting for more" manpower and other help from the government, he said.

Debate over the government's reconstruction plans intensified over the past week, after Tokyo unveiled a new?15-member committee headed by Makoto Iokibe, head of the National Defense Academy of Japan, with aims?to develop by late June a broad plan for restoring coastal communities. Other members include Tadao?Ando, a renowned architect whose famous works include a terraced house in Osaka in which residents sometimes need an umbrella to go to the bathroom; Makiko Uchidate, a famous scriptwriter; and?Sony Corp. Vice Chairman Ryoji Chubachi.

Members were selected because of their passion for restoration, public influence and connections to the affected region, and have been asked to come up with creative designs so that the cities are built better and safer, officials said. The government also?appointed a famous philosopher, Takeshi Umehara, as a special adviser "to give advice from a wider viewpoint," a government spokesman said.

Among the newest ideas, floated by Mr. Iokibe after the group's inaugural meeting Thursday, is the creation of a "Hill of Hope," using rubble to make an elevated field that can be used as a public park and evacuation center during future tsunamis. He said he would also urge communities to move to higher ground, and that if fishermen insisted on living near the sea, they should do so in strong concrete buildings at least five stories high so they can go to high floors if a tsunami strikes.

Japanese officials tried a similar approach after the 1995 Kobe earthquake with bad results, said?Shigeki Yamanaka, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University who specializes in disaster reconstruction. The Kobe effort involved a number of "dream stories" aimed at transforming the city, but few ever materialized, and some of the ones that did?didn't work, he said. The plans included an?effort to create new residential areas on higher land that in the end separated people from their workplaces and communities.

"I'm afraid they are going to make more dream stories" now, Mr. Yamanaka said.?

Shintaro Nakagawa, a spokesman for the prime minister's office, said the government has no choice but to take its time to ensure the reconstruction is done right. "I understand that for those who live in shelters, if restoration is done earlier even by one day, it would be better," he said. "But it takes time to have creative restoration," which is necessary to ensure the cities' survival.

Many people in the affected areas said they were sympathetic with the government's aims, in part because they, too, hope for a grand plan to revive a region that already was economically depressed—and vulnerable to disasters—before the tsunami. The scale of the disaster is beyond anyone's capacity to respond, some said, and there are also important signs of progress, including many road, rail and airport links that have reopened.

But the clock is ticking in many coastal cities. More than 140,000 people are still living in evacuation centers, many of them without any idea of when they can leave, and tensions are rising after weeks of living in tight quarters with viruses spreading. More than 200 mostly elderly people have died in shelters from cold weather and illnesses since March 11, according to local media reports.

In the fishing community of Kesennuma, roughly 1,000 people are still missing and water and electricity aren't yet switched on in some neighborhoods. More than 40 ships weighing more than 100 tons each are still scattered inland, with little sign they'll be moved soon. Hundreds of smashed cars still lie about, with some standing vertically on their headlights and supported by nearby debris, or, in one case, parked on the second-floor awning over a shop.At the Hiyama fishing-supply store near Kesennuma's harbor, employees are clearing out debris and washing off what little there is that is salvageable from the bottom floor of their three-story building, including nets and coils of rope. Electrical wires and insulation dangle from the ceiling.

Rubble piles are so large, and will take so long to clear, that residents have suggested officials place giant nets over them to contain the debris in the long months ahead. Buildings that survived the waves stand torched from fires that engulfed the city afterward.

"We haven't heard any news at all" about how and when business owners can rebuild, said Waka Yamamoto, 56, whose husband owns the operation. She said they aren't covered by insurance and have significant debts from previous years of expansion, which included three other locations that were largely destroyed and seven lost vehicles. Although two floors of the main store are still in good shape, "we have no idea when we can restart," she said.

In nearby Rikuzentakata, 1,000 people are still missing, and officials are asking locals who once lived in the most-affected areas not to go back yet.

Mitsuo Kikuchi, a planning department official, said at least one man has already tried to reclaim his land, erecting a prefabricated house without permission on the site. "It is already there, so we cannot do anything," he said. He said he hoped others would refrain, though he wasn't counting on it.

"The evacuees are getting frustrated," he said. "They cannot see a clear picture of their future. As time passes by, they are getting into more conflicts."

In the Daiichi Junior High School nearby, one of dozens of evacuation shelters in the city, there are still about 1,200 people, many of them crammed into a gymnasium with basketball hoops and an auditorium stage with purple curtains—and families huddled on it. Although it appears to be clean and well-run, residents are worried they may be stuck there a lot longer.

Fumiko Murakami, 68, said she's doing OK living with two other women on a pile of blankets spread over a reed mat the size of a king-sized bed, with a knee-high wall of cardboard boxes for privacy. But she has struggled to get over a cold she caught soon after running away from what she described as a "big growling sound" on March 11, and wonders how long the situation can continue.

"The longer we stay, the more the anxiety grows," she said. "I wish I could have a certain date to leave this so I could have that motivation, a temporary goal, and without that, it's difficult."

At another shelter, a 61-year-old printer named Matsuo Sasaki said he heard about the latest restoration committee, but "by the time they're offering something, we'll be exhausted." He said he figures he can stand another month in the shelter—where he sleeps with six other families in a single room—but after that he'll need some other place to go.

—George Nishiyama contributed to this article.

Write to Patrick Barta at patrick.barta@wsj.com and Miho Inada at miho.inada@wsj.com

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