By Tim Kelly and Kim Kyung Hoon
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – A decade ago, Sakae Kato stayed behind to rescue cats abandoned by neighbors who fled the radiation clouds coming out of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. He’s not leaving.
“I want to make sure that I’m here to take care of the last one,” he said of his home in the contaminated quarantine zone. “After that, I want to die, either a day or an hour later.”
So far, he has buried 23 cats in his garden, the most recent graves disturbed by wild boars that roam the depopulated community. He is looking after 41 other people in his home and another empty building on his property.
Kato leaves food for wild cats in a shed that he heats up with a paraffin stove. He also rescued a dog, Pochi. Without running water, he has to fill bottles from a nearby mountain spring and drive to public restrooms.
The 57-year-old man, a small construction entrepreneur in his old life, says his decision to stay while 160,000 others evacuated the area was partly fueled by the shock of finding dead pets in abandoned houses he helped demolish.
Cats have also given you a reason to stay on land that has been in your family for three generations.
“I don’t want to leave, I like living in these mountains,” he said, standing in front of his house, which he can visit but, technically, he is not allowed to sleep.
The two-story wooden structure is in poor condition.
The floorboards rot. It is dotted with holes where wall panels and tiles that prevented rain outside were displaced by a powerful earthquake last month, bringing frightening memories of the devastating earthquake on March 11, 2011, which led to a tsunami and a nuclear melting.
“It could last another two or three years. The walls started to tilt,” said Kato.
Decontamination in fields near your home signals that other residents will be allowed to return soon.
He estimates that he spends $ 7,000 a month on his animals, part of that to buy dog food for wild boar that gather near his home at sunset. Farmers consider them a plague and also blame them for destroying empty houses.
On February 25, Kato was arrested on suspicion of releasing wild boars caught in traps set by the Japanese government in November. At the time this article was published, he was still being detained for questioning.
Yumiko Konishi, a Tokyo veterinarian who helps Kato, said local volunteers were taking care of the cats on her property, but at least one has died since he was arrested.
FEAR LINGERS
About 30 km (19 miles) southeast, still in the restricted area, Hisae Unuma is also assessing the state of her home, which withstood the earthquake a decade ago, but is now close to collapsing after years of being hit by wind, rain and snow.
“I am surprised that it is still standing,” said the 67-year-old farmer, a week after the earthquake that damaged Kato’s home.
“I could see my cattle in the field over there,” she said, pointing to the living room, a view now blocked by a tangle of bamboo.
Unuma fled when the cooling system at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s nuclear power plant, 2.5 km away, failed and its reactors began to melt.
The government, which adopted Fukushima as a symbol of national revival amid preparations for the Tokyo Olympics, is encouraging residents to return to the decontaminated land.
Persistent fears about the nuclear plant, jobs and poor infrastructure are keeping many at bay.
Unuma, now a horticulturist in Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo, where her husband died three years ago, will not return even if the government scraps radioactive soil from her fields.
Radiation levels around his home are about 20 times higher than in Tokyo, according to a dosimeter reading by Reuters.
Only removing the radioactive nuclei from Fukushima will make her feel safe, a task that will take decades to complete.
“No matter the threat of earthquakes, these reactors can explode if someone drops a tool in the wrong place,” she said.
Before making the four-hour drive back to his new home, Unuma visits Rancho da Esperança, a cattle farm owned by Masami Yoshizawa, who defied the order to slaughter his irradiated cattle in protest against the government and Tokyo Electric Power.
Among the 233 oxen is still the last surviving ox of the herd of 50 men that Unuma used to care for, and one of his last living links to the life he had before the disaster.
Her ox ignores her when she tries to lure him, so Yoshizawa gives her a handful of cabbage to try to tempt him.
“What happens to cattle is that they really only think about food,” said Yoshizawa.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly and Kim Kyong Hoon; Additional reporting by Akira Tomoshige; Editing by Pravin Char and Lincoln Feast.)