It is now three years since the Fukushima nuclear disaster began.

On 11 March 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes on record hit north-east Japan.

The resulting tsunami killed almost 20,000 people, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Kaori Saito watched the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster unfold on TV from her living room in Fukushima City, roughly 60 kilometres away.

When the government instructed her to keep her two young children indoors to avoid radiation, she asked her husband if they could move away. He said no and refused to discuss it further.

Mrs Saito argued with her children when they wanted to play outside, and washed their clothes constantly.

The constant worry inflicted a psychological toll, and in August 2011 she moved away, divorcing her husband a year later.

Today she lives with her children in a government-subsidised apartment in the mountains of Nagano, almost 400km southwest of Fukushima City.

“I felt I had no choice if I was going to protect them,” she says. “It’s been very hard,” she admits. “All our relatives are in Fukushima. The children get to see their grandparents twice a year, if they’re lucky.”

Genpatsu rikon (nuclear divorce) is one of the less-documented problems to have emerged since the triple meltdown at the Daiichi plant.

Nobody knows how many couples have been pulled apart by the disaster, but anecdotes suggest dozens, perhaps hundreds of families permanently separated.

In most cases, mothers have moved away from Fukushima Prefecture, leaving behind husbands who are tethered to work or simply don’t believe the radiation is harmful.

Government estimates say that 270,000 people from the Tohoku (northeast) region remain scattered throughout Japan since the tsunami/earthquake/nuclear disaster began.

Of these, 146,520 were forced to abandon their homes in or near the government’s mandatory 20km evacuation zone. Tens of thousands more have fled voluntarily.

About a third of the refugees are in their sixties or older, and about 100,000 of the refugees live in temporary accommodation.

For many, this means hastily built, two-roomed homes closely packed into available land in towns and cities around Fukushima Prefecture. Many of the homes are starting to decay.

Thousands more share houses with relatives.

For Yuki Segawa and her three young children life now is a government-built apartment in the northern suburbs of Tokyo, a three-hour drive from her home in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture.

She has held her family together – just. Her husband Yoshinobu drives from Koriyama to be with the family on weekends. Like many refugees, she says the hardest part of life away from home is being separated from the network of family and friends that once cushioned life.

In November 2013, a top government official acknowledged what evacuees have known since 2011: Many will never return home.

Shigeru Ishiba, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democrats (LDP) said the “time will come” when the government will have to reverse its policy of allowing everyone back.

For now, however, families like the Segawas live in limbo. The most contaminated areas, with annual radiation doses of at least 50 millisieverts (home to about 25,000 people) are still designated “difficult-to-return-to areas”, a government-coined euphemism for permanent homelessness.

Minako Sugano, a mother of three from Yanagawa Town, Date City, in Fukushima Prefecture, and a former kindergarten teacher,  is constantly worried about the health of her children. They moved from an area recommended for evacuation to another, less contaminated area in Date City.

“Although the children are evacuated, they still commute to schools in high-dose radiation areas, and as of last year one of my children started elementary school,” she explains.

“I tried to organise a transfer to another school and then to buy land and a house, but due to being in the fourth year of my mortgage there were restrictions and conditions on how much I could borrow, so I am going nowhere fast with this.

“Just as I was proceeding with applying for national aid available in the form of a disaster restoration housing loan, I discovered that the evacuation order had been lifted, meaning I no longer qualified for this aid.

“It never occurred to me that I would be forced to return to a high radiation-dose area on the back of just one case of decontamination and measurement.

“I am trying to improve my situation now, but am not making the slightest progress.

“I want to protect my children. What kind of parents knowingly take their kids into a place that they know is dangerous?”

Organic farmer Tatsuko Okawara is married, has five children, and has farmed for 30 years.

She thought of giving up farming but instead now runs a farmers’ shop that sells local produce to help the farming community. The radiation level is noted on the foods.

The family evacuated to Koriyama right after the disaster. But her husband said: “I cannot leave the chicken and the cows.”

The three children who live with them said: “We don’t want to leave our friends and the house.”

They returned.

She and her husband turned over ten to twenty centimetres of the topsoil and then chose to grow vegetables that don’t go too deep, like the short carrots they grow now. Vegetables less prone to absorbing radiation. They decided to continue being farmers.

Tatsuko Okawara is also a puppeteer. She plays a puppet show at her shop. The story is about a couple affected by a nuclear disaster. She created the tale, which is based on her friends’ true experiences, so that their story is not forgotten.

So people do not forget what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants almost three years ago; do not forget that the disaster continues.

“Forgetting things means there is a chance that it can be repeated. That is my message,” she says.

“That is the theory of history. People who forget what the war is like always trigger the war.

She is calm: “Forgetting things is very scary.

“Forgetting Fukushima makes it more likely that such a nuclear disaster could happen elsewhere,” she said.