Fukushima evacuees go home for holiday season

I know it is their home and all that but I would not go. Who needs exposure just so you can be home for the holidays?

Agree, it's either safe or it isn't.

Remains a national disgrace. Defence budget up 5% but pitifully little being done to sort this out.

Japan is the 3rd largest economy boasting about its innovations and foreign aid. It's sad it's unable, unwilling to look after those that have suffered the most from policies that allowed an industry to flout the law. 3years and soo many are in temporary housing that was not designed to be used for 3 years. Government worries about business not its own people...wtf

I know it is their home and all that but I would not go. Who needs exposure just so you can be home for the holidays?

It all depends. At a certain age you might think that life in a temporary shelter is not preferable to treasured moments in your own home. You will die regardless. You might not be affected by radiation and might enjoy the end of your life more by taking opportunities to be in your own home rather than living life in fear in cramped temporary housing.

If you are affected by radiation, is trading being warehoused in temporary housing with no real prospects for a future much different from being warehoused in a care facility until 80 and dying of radiation sickness or lasting to 100 radiation sickness free? The end is the same: ashes for us all.

I suspect that these sorts of hard questions the rest of us don't have to think about are very real to people having to make these choices. All choices are a kind of gambling. All choices come with a price. Sometimes it works for you. Sometimes it doesn't. You never know in advance.

I have a great deal of empathy and compassion for people in this position.

What good is going "home" when the community it was situated in no longer exists. More like returning to a ghost town. Face it, their new home is now their relocation center. Time to make a realistic plan for the future, which may include moving somewhere else, perhaps en masse.

I sympathize with these people, especially if they're still in shelters without any compensation or temp. housing, and I know more than anything they want to 'return', but seriously it is not what it was, and I cannot understand why anyone would want to go back there. First off, and most importantly, they're risking their health in terms of radiation. Secondly, all they would do is spend the week and a half cleaning and have to vacate again. It would be unsanitary and unsafe. Not worth the risk, as comforting as it might be to be 'home'. The government needs to get these people relocated and let them start their lives again, and make a new home that they can spend with family.