A public worker scans a toddler for radiation at a nursery center in the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, where radiation from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continues to be detected in the air, on April 6, 2011. The village decided to alleviate concern by evacuating pregnant women and parents with children under 3 years old, although it is not, for the most part, subject to the government's evacuation directive. Kyodo News

FUKUSHIMA, Japan, April 6 (Kyodo) – The village of Iitate near a crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture plans to evacuate pregnant women, toddlers and babies amid a growing doubt among villagers about the government’s radiation safety instructions, village officials said Wednesday. The mayor of the nearby city of Minamisoma, however, urged the Fukushima prefectural government to help lift an indoor evacuation order being imposed on part of the city. In Iitate, about 40 kilometers southwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, about 50 pregnant women, children aged 2 or younger and their guardians plan to leave for the capital city of Fukushima next Wednesday or later even though most parts of the village are outside any evacuation zone set by the government. A village official said radiation readings seen in prefectural monitoring in Iitate have been higher than other locations. ”We judged the evacuation as necessary to allay concerns,” the official said. …

[Cf. Radioactive fallout from Fukushima is comparable to Chernobyl – ‘Iitate has reached a contamination level in which evacuation is necessary’] Babies, pregnant women to leave village outside evacuation zone