'Sexual Assault' Occurring Every Night at Poor Japanese Shelter... Exposed 10 Years After Major Earthquake

Residents observing a moment of silence for the victims on the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Soyoung] Sexual assaults against women in the poor evacuation shelters during the 'Great East Japan Earthquake,' which triggered the Fukushima nuclear plant explosion, have come to light after 10 years.

On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Sanriku, Japan. The earthquake measured a magnitude of 9.0, the largest ever recorded in modern Japanese seismic observations.

On the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, NHK in Japan aired a documentary titled "Buried voices." The documentary covered sexual assault experiences of women living in the three prefectures most affected by the earthquake: Fukushima, Iwate, and Miyagi.

According to the NHK documentary, a woman who lost her husband in the earthquake said, "The evacuation shelter chief blatantly forced sexual relations, saying, 'It's a big problem that your husband is gone. I'll give you towels or food, so come at night.'"

Another woman in her 20s at the time said, "The minds of the men in the shelter seemed to be deteriorating," adding, "At night, men would enter the blankets where women were lying, and they would grab women and take them to dark places to undress them." However, she testified that "people around said they were too young to help and all pretended not to see."

Another woman revealed that she was abused by multiple men. She said, "I was afraid that if I reported the abuse, I would be killed and thrown into the sea," and "Even if I disappeared, they would think I was swept away by the tsunami, so I couldn't tell anyone what happened."

People who became refugees in an instant due to the earthquake stayed in evacuation shelters with only thin mats and blankets without partitions, and the women in the shelters claimed that such crimes happened countless times every day.

A few months after the disaster, the "Companion Hotline," a women-only counseling line established to provide help with family, work, and mental health issues to earthquake victims, announced the results of an analysis of about 360,000 counseling cases received between 2013 and 2018 last February.

The analysis showed that over 50% of the consultations in the three prefectures affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake involved sexual violence. Notably, about 40% of the victims were young women in their teens and twenties.

Tomoko Endo, Secretary-General of the "24-Hour Hotline," emphasized, "The anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster revives the memories of the victims and reminds us of the sexual assaults that happened 10 years ago," adding, "Having learned lessons from the 2011 disaster, we must prevent women and children from becoming victims of a 'secondary disaster' through support such as telephone counseling."