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In March 2025, the government of Japan announced initial guidelines for how they plan to evacuate 110,000 residents and 10,000 tourists from the Sakishima Islands. They have designated eight prefectures – the seven Kyūshu prefectures and Yamaguchi Prefecture – to accept internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the Sakishima Islands, and the eight prefectures have in turn designated 32 municipalities to receive the IDPs for the first month of displacement.
Although Japan has not specified the scenario under which an evacuation would be ordered, media accounts report that these plans are being developed in response to a Taiwan Strait contingency. With increased Chinese pressure on Taiwan and Japan, Japan is stepping up its civil protection efforts, starting with the Sakishima Islands. The Sakishima Islands are a part of Okinawa prefecture, and Yonaguni Island is only 111 kilometers from Taiwan.
Robust, reliable civil protection planning is important for humanitarian and strategic reasons. The humanitarian benefits are self-evident: the better prepared Japan is, the more lives will be preserved during the evacuation process itself, and the better the quality of life for IDPs during their displacement. But there are also strategic benefits: Japan will be less likely to yield to an aggressor’s demands – and aggressors are more likely to respect Japan’s deterrent threats – if there is confidence in the Japanese government’s ability to protect its own citizens.
In my recent report for the Leiden Asia Center, “Preparing for the Actual Worst: Supporting Japanese Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) From Okinawa,” I asked two questions: (1) What are the weaknesses in Japan’s current civil protection planning? (2) How can Japan, prefectural governments, and municipal governments better prepare to accept IDPs from Okinawa?
This article explores the second question. For an answer to the first question, click here to read Part 1 of this two-part series.
A map showing the location of Japan’s Sakishima Islands and Yonagunia Island relative to Taiwan and Okinawa Island.
So, how can Japan, prefectural governments, and municipal governments better prepare to accept IDPs from Okinawa? To answer that, I analyzed English- and Japanese-language secondary literature on the experiences of the approximately 470,000 Japanese IDPs from the March 11 triple disaster.
There are two overarching lessons from the historical case study. First, one of the reasons that support for IDPs fell short was because – at the central, prefectural, and municipal levels – the receiving governments viewed the problem of IDPs as “temporary.” This short-sighted approach likely made a bad situation worse for the IDPs.
If the situation is so severe that Japan orders the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from its southwestern islands, then it is unlikely that these IDPs would be able to return to Okinawa anytime soon. Japan’s central, prefectural, and municipal governments should offer support to IDPs with this long-term view from the very beginning.
Second, aid offered to IDPs should not be tied to criteria that is irrelevant to their lived experience during the displacement period. Concretely, the distinction between “mandatory” and “voluntary” evacuees from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident caused unnecessary confusion in policy implementation. It also led to issues of fairness between “mandatory” and “voluntary” evacuees, as well as among “voluntary” evacuees, depending on the policies of where they fled to. Furthermore, these distinctions – based on where one was registered at the time of the accident – became less relevant over time as displacement continued.
Instead, Japan should offer aid based on the individuals’ needs and their present circumstances. Two other cases provide positive examples of how to offer aid: the 1959 Temporary Measures for Displaced Coal Miners and income assistance provided to those who were displaced by the 2000 Miyakejima eruption.
There are important differences between the historical IDP experience following the March 11 triple disaster and a hypothetical IDP experience following a Taiwan Strait contingency. However, it is still possible to draw generalizable lessons from this history.
First, long-term housing must be secured for IDPs as quickly as possible. This relates most directly to the first lesson, that IDPs should not be treated as a short-term challenge. Addressing IDPs’ housing needs as a long-term challenge from the very beginning will minimize the number of times that IDPs must move and disrupt their lives.
Second, a registration system for IDPs should be automatic and opt-out, not opt-in. Having an accurate database of IDPs is important for two-way communication so relevant government agencies can communicate with IDPs what support they are entitled to and conduct representative surveys of IDPs’ needs.
Third, governments at all levels should begin collaboration with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have relevant experience now. Due to a history of natural disasters, Aichi and Niigata prefectures had experience collaborating with NGOs while Saitama Prefecture did not. This shaped the effectiveness of government-NGO collaboration in supporting IDPs.
Fourth, governments at all levels should plan for how they may need to reorganize to play a mediating role across different government sections and NGO partners. IDPs have multifaceted needs, and there must be a central coordinating agency that can advocate for them across different issues: housing, medical care, employment, education, anti-discrimination, legal assistance, and so forth. Prefectures and municipalities that already had or reorganized their internal structures to address this reality generally did a better job of supporting IDPs.
Fifth and finally, governments need to be prepared to combat disinformation and misinformation. This is a challenge not only for Japan and the issue of IDPs but for everyone across all issues. Japan can create specialized social media accounts now to minimize confusion about which accounts are the official government accounts during a Taiwan Strait contingency and subsequent period of displacement. Japan can “prebunk” rumors by clarifying what kind of support will be made available to IDPs. Japan may also want to set minimum content moderation standards for digital platforms. Again, this challenge is broader than the issue of IDPs, but anything that Japan and NGOs can do to increase societal resilience to disinformation and misinformation will be helpful for ensuring that IDPs get accurate information and do not become scapegoats in their new communities.
Although most of the report focuses on what Japan can do better, I also acknowledge what Japan has done well. First, there is an attempt to address the special needs of vulnerable populations. Second, there is a strong push to keep communities together. Third and finally, I commend Japan for taking the first steps in tackling a problem that is incredibly difficult – logistically, politically, and diplomatically. I also recognize that there is a lot of movement behind the scenes, and it is possible that new guidelines expected this spring will address the issues that I raised.
Furthermore, breaking down a complex problem – like evacuating every civilian from Okinawa Prefecture – into its component, chronological parts is a sensible approach. However, this policymaking strategy can backfire if simplified assumptions used now to make planning easier are not later revised to be more realistic, and if decisions about the early stages of evacuation made now are not later revisited as the impact of these decisions on the IDP’s long-term experience becomes clearer. Japan’s central, prefectural, and municipal governments will need to communicate clearly how their planning is improving over time to maintain the public’s trust – especially the trust of the Okinawa residents that could be asked to evacuate.
As I conclude in my report:
Japan needs to strike a better balance between (a) simplifying the problem and focusing on the “early stages” of evacuation in order to make the complex problem tractable and (b) showing that they are aware of how complex the problem is and that they understand that displacement will be a long-term challenge for the IDPs. If Japan errs too far on the side of making the problem tractable for themselves, they could fail to convince citizens to trust their planning at all. The best evacuation plan is not the most tightly-choreographed one, but the one that citizens believe is credible.
For more, please find the full report here.