Every day I drive by this sign reminding me that I live in a Nuclear Free Zone. What is that—you may ask.

In 1982, residents of tiny Garrett Park, MD voted to ban nuclear weapons from being produced, stored, or transported within its 123 acre borders. At the time, the New York Times declared it the first in the nation, though Missoula, Montana had apparently banned nuclear facilities in 1978. Within the year, Sykesville and Takoma Park, MD followed suit. Four years later, Berkeley, CA passed a similar act. Being a small suburb outside Washington, D.C., Garrett Park’s status is largely symbolic and always was so.

The CSX freight rail line runs adjacent to the Town’s border, presumably untouched by the ban. The Town also falls just outside the 50 mile radius of two nuclear power plants, Calvert Cliffs, in Lusby, Maryland and Peach Bottom in Delta, Pennsylvania.

The Town of Namie, Japan didn’t vote to host a nuclear reactor, but because it sits within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it’s a ghost town today. Imagine if you had lived in Namie in 2011. The day after a huge earthquake, there is an explosion at the nearby nuclear plant and you leave home quickly with just a few personal items. Your house is not damaged seriously by the earthquake or explosion, but you learn later through media stories that the government has designated a zone surrounding your home as “difficult to return for a long time.” After three years of living in temporary housing and scraping by on odd jobs and compensation payments because your employer shut down, the government announces a new estimate that you may be able to return home ten years after the explosion.

This is the current situation for tens of thousands of residents from the most contaminated areas of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan after the March, 2011 nuclear plant meltdown caused by a 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Over three years after initial worldwide headlines and footage of boats and helicopters spraying water at the smoldering plant have faded, approximately 80,000 Fukushima residents are still evacuated and living in temporary accommodations. After the disaster, Fukushima Prefecture published a revitalization plan in December, 2011 and an update in June, 2012. The plan’s goals are simultaneously lofty and poignantly realistic. Three of the twelve priorities involve revitalizing industry and promoting new sector hubs for renewable energy and health and medical production. At the same time, the performance target for restoring the Prefecture population by 2020 (down to 40,900 in 2012 from 146,400 pre-disaster) is listed simply as “to be increased”.

“You get depressed when you can’t see your future.” (Chairman, temporary housing residents’ association in Japan)*

We tend to forget disasters that happen far away from home after a few weeks or months. Just a few weeks ago we were reminded of the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the Phillipines, only because another one was bearing down on the residents living in rebuilt shantytowns. Even in the U.S. it may take several years before all residents are back in their own or a replacement home after a large disaster like Hurricane Katrina or Sandy.

But ten years? What would you do if your hometown was contaminated and unlivable for at least ten years? How do you prepare for that kind of disaster? Would you prefer to live in temporary situations while the government does everything it can to clean up your neighborhood to make it safe to move back? Would you be willing to go back wearing a mask during daylight hours to dig up the top layer of soil from your own yard to hasten the decontamination progress as some Fukushima residents have? Would you rather be able to move right away and start fresh in a new location distanced from the contamination? How would you feel about being separated from family, neighbors and your community for years? Is your profession one that you can find new work easily in a new location? If you run a small business would you be able to run it out of a temporary or new location? Would you be able to rebuild your customer base with the community scattered among temporary housing sites?

Two years after the disaster, Google Street View began posting panoramic images of the empty Namie, which allows displaced residents to see their hometown from afar. It also allows the world to see the abandoned town with waist high weeds, broken windows, debris still piled up from the earthquake and tsunami, or a sign warning of feral cows roaming around since being released by distressed farmers.

Towns like Namie continually survey residents about their situation and whether they will come back. Each time fewer say they hold out hope for returning and most of those are older, without children. The latest from Namie in August 2014 said almost 50 percent had decided not to come back, up over ten points from the year prior. What if you rebuild a village and only the elderly are willing to live there? Maybe we are more transient in the U.S. and the threat of a forced relocation from our hometown is not so devastating as it is to those who’ve inherited their lands from generations of ancestors. Maybe.

Meanwhile I’m glad I live in a real nuclear free community where neighbors check on and help each other after disasters and I get to enjoy the cherry trees blooming gloriously like clockwork every year.

“Cherry blossoms in Namie fall without being loved”

(from a poem by Minoru Ikeda, Retired letter carrier/ decontamination worker)**

For more articles about disaster preparedness, click here.

Photo credits: the author; CrisisReliefJapan.com

*NHK **Asahi Shimbum