UPDATE1: Over 21,000 dead or missing in quake-hit Japan: police+

TOKYO, March 22 Kyodo -
(EDS: UPDATING DEATH TOLL, ADDING INFO)
The total number of people killed or reported missing as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan stood at 21,459 as of 9 p.m. Monday, the National Police Agency said, while growing signs of reconstruction emerged, with access restored to all communities in the disaster-struck coastal prefecture of Iwate.
The number of deaths reported in a total of 12 prefectures stood at 8,805, while the number of people reported missing by their relatives climbed to 12,654 in six prefectures. Police have identified around 4,080 bodies, of which 2,990 have been returned to their families, the agency said.
A total of about 320,000 evacuees, including people who fled areas around the troubled nuclear reactors in Fukushima Prefecture, are now staying at about 2,100 makeshift shelters set up in 16 prefectures.
''Until now, we've asked (relief workers) to prioritize the rescue of affected people. We now want them to place priority on assisting people who are living in the shelters,'' Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai told reporters after calling at a Ground Self-Defense Force camp in Sendai, the prefectural capital, to encourage troops on a disaster mission.
In the hard-hit city of Ishinomaki, also in Miyagi, the governor handed a letter addressed to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, requesting aid for reconstruction, to a visiting ruling party lawmaker, as Kan canceled his scheduled visit to the city Monday due to bad weather.
Murai later toured shelters to comfort people displaced by the quake and tsunami.
Growing signs of reconstruction emerged on Monday, more than a week after the magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami devastated the country's northeast, with the Iwate prefectural government saying that access has been restored to all communities in the disaster-struck coastal prefecture.
The municipal government of Rikuzentakata, a city in Iwate hit hard by the tsunami, opened a makeshift municipal office and began accepting papers from residents, including death reports.
At Hachinohe port in Aomori Prefecture, fishermen went out to sea for the first time since the tsunami destroyed or damaged many fishing boats, while more than a dozen Muslims from Aichi Prefecture offered about 900 servings of curry at a high school in the town of Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, for people displaced by the tsunami.
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said it had enlisted around 5,900 caregivers to dispatch to areas hit by the quake and tsunami to help address a shortage of staff looking after the elderly.
Up to around 28,000 elderly residents of nursing homes can be accommodated at nursing homes in other prefectures, the ministry added.
Rescuers continued to search for those washed away by the tsunami, with dogs trained to find people joining rescue and search efforts in parts of Sendai.
Delivering relief goods to survivors remains difficult, even days after the quake.
In Sendai, which has accommodated around 14,000 evacuees at about 140 locations, people who took refuge in an elementary school building have been unable to eat frozen food due to a lack of electricity needed to microwave it. They are also still waiting for a large supply of underwear, local officials said.
Meanwhile, the health ministry notified the nation's 47 prefectural governments that they must monitor inns in their jurisdictions to prevent them from turning away people who have fled from Fukushima Prefecture.
The notice was issued after the ministry received reports that people who fled Fukushima had been turned away from inns in other prefectures, apparently because of the perception that they have been exposed to radiation from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The ministry says the levels of radiation confirmed so far are miniscule and that refusing to accommodate Fukushima residents violates a law regulating inns and hotels.
Meanwhile, work to connect power cables to the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Fukushima plant was halted Monday, after smoke rose from the buildings housing the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.
TEPCO said it had briefly evacuated its workers after grayish and blackish smoke was seen at the southeast of the No. 3 reactor building around 3:55 p.m. above a pool storing spent nuclear fuel rods, though a blast was not heard.
The smoke stopped after 6 p.m., but TEPCO subsequently found that white smoke was rising through a crack in the roof of the building housing the No. 2 reactor at around 6:20 p.m. The utility said later the smoke is believed to be steam, not from the reactor's fuel pool.
The Tokyo Fire Department stopped spraying water for the day after the smoke rose from the No. 3 reactor building. It will suspend the operation until safety at the site is confirmed.