A decade ago, Kato Sakae stayed behind to rescue cats abandoned by neighbors who fled the radiation clouds belching from the nearby Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. He still refuses to leave.
“I want to make sure I am here to take care of the last one,” he said from his home in the contaminated quarantine zone. “After that, I want to die, whether that be a day or hour later.”
He has so far buried 23 cats in his garden, the most recent graves disturbed by wild boars that roam the depopulated community. He is looking after 41 others in his home and in an uninhabited building on his property.
Photo: Reuters
Kato leaves food for feral cats in a storage shed that he heats with a paraffin stove. He has also rescued a dog, Pochi.
With no running water, he has to fill bottles from a nearby mountain spring and drive to public toilets.
The 57-year-old, a small construction business owner in his former life, said that his decision to stay as 160,000 other people evacuated the area was spurred in part by the shock of finding dead pets in abandoned houses that he helped to demolish.
Photo: Reuters
The cats also gave him a reason to stay on land that has been owned by his 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 is allowed to visit but, technically, not allowed to sleep in.
The two-story wooden structure is in poor condition.
Rotten floorboards sag. It is peppered with holes where wall panels and roof tiles that kept the rain out were dislodged by a powerful earthquake last month, stirring frightening memories of the devastating quake on March 11, 2001, that led to a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown.
“It might last another two or three years. The walls have started to lean,” Kato said.
Decontamination in fields near his house signal that other residents are soon to be allowed to return.
He estimates that he spends US$7,000 per month on his animals, part of it to buy dog food for wild boars that gather near his house at sunset. Farmers consider them pests, and also blame them for wrecking empty homes.
On Thursday last week, Kato was arrested on suspicion of freeing wild boars caught in traps set by the Japanese government in November last year.
At the time of writing, he was still being detained for questioning.
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