April 07, 2011 
By Jacey Eckhart
http://www.stripes.com/news/voluntary-departure-program-a-safe-haven-or-a-free-vacation-1.139336 - disqus_thread
Following the March 11 tsunami, earthquake, and subsequent radiation leakage from Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, nearly 7,000 military family members from five U.S. military bases in Japan left the country under the volunteer evacuation plan.
That’s when the attacks commenced. Not so much from the Japanese nationals—their worst slur was to call the departing foreigners “flyjin.” The attacks on those who departed and those who stayed came from other military families. A reader sent me a link to a
forum in Stars and Stripes because she could not believe military families could be so vicious with one another.
I could.
It isn’t that military families are so hateful. We are a pretty good group as a rule. It is just that when any of us—military or civilian--must make a decision between a rock and a hard place, the fallout is pulverizing. Either choice is bound to be wrong. Either decision is going to hurt. And either way it is going to hurt for a long time.
All of us seem to get to this hardplace decision-making at one point or another in life. Hardplace decision-making isn’t like deciding whether or not to refinance the mortgage or which summer day camp to choose for the twins. This is the kind of tumultuous, life-changing decision making that has you choosing between two not-so-good things. This is the choice between the risk of radiation poisoning in Japan and the risk of living in your mama’s basement in Nebraska for six months. This is the decision between whether we keep Ashley in that middle school where she is being bullied or whether we pay money we don’t really have to send her to private school. This is the decision between divorce and hoping against hope that things will get better this year.
Surely, this year, things will be different.
Won’t they?
When life decisions are this big, when our choices are between two long hard fallouts, I think it is a natural reaction to try to figure out what other people in the same situation are doing and just do that. It is as if the decisions of other people will legitimize our own. So it isn’t any surprise to me when people fight out these decisions viciously and in public, especially online. We all want to be reassured that we have done the right thing and that any other choice would have been wrong, wrong, WRONG.
Yet majority consensus doesn’t really apply to hardplace decisions. That’s how you know it is hardplace. These are the decisions you must make alone. As a couple. As a family. No one knows your family members the way you do. No one understands so intimately how they will tolerate change or risk. No one can truly evaluate your history or your neighborhood or your mama the way you can. And you have to do that on your own.
So what do people need from us when they are making this kind of decision? I’m not sure. When Brad and I were trying to decide whether to live together in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or whether the kids and I should more on San Diego, I know needed my parents to listen to me over and over while I made this decision out loud--then changed my mind ten minutes later. I can’t speak for everyone, but maybe a hard rock decision means that we need a little encouragement to trust our own judgement, a little faith that we can get through either way, and a little silence to think it all over.
Jacey Eckhart is a military life consultant in Washington, DC. She is the author of "The Homefront Club" and the voice behind the award-winning CD "These Boots." Facebook Jacey or contact her at jacey@jaceyeckhart.com.