The government lifted on Thursday morning an evacuation order for part of the town of Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, which has been designated as a difficult-to-return zone since the nuclear accident in March 2011.
The evacuation order was removed at 9 a.m. Thursday, paving the way for former residents to return and live there. This is the second order to be removed in a difficult-to-return zone, following that for the village of Katsurao, and the first among the municipalities hosting Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
