Nearly half a million people fled their homes after the earthquake and tsunami that caused a melting of the cores of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, in Japan. In recent years, with the progress of the decontamination work, the inhabitants of some towns in the area have received the allowed to re-enter, ma less than a third of the population has decided to do so: young people are discouraged by the lack of work and the absence of functioning services and infrastructures, and it is above all the elderly who want to return to their old homes.
There are also those who, in these ten years, have never left: this is the case of Sakae Kato, a 57-year-old who has chosen to continue living in the evacuated areas to take care of the cats left behind after the accident at the plant. nuclear. In the past Kato ran a small construction company, and after the disaster of 2011 he started working in the demolition of some houses damaged by the earthquake: often finding dead pets inside the buildings, he decided to stay to help those still alive. . His story was told by Reuters.
Kato’s house is located in one of the still contaminated areas, in the mountains. Kato might visit it, but he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep in it, which he does.
The building is a two story house in poor condition. Part of the floor is rotting, panels are needed to cover the holes in the walls and roof, and there is no more running water. Kato then fills bottles of water from a nearby mountain spring and uses public restrooms outside the evacuated area. Together with him live 41 stray cats and a dog: some of the animals stay at home with him, others in a shed that Kato has equipped with a heater.
Over the years 23 cats have died. Kato avoids new litters but has no intention of abandoning adult cats, although feeding and maintaining them is a big expense. “I want to make sure I’m here to take care of every one of them, right down to the last,” Kato told a Reuters.
The man also feeds the wild boars that live around his house, a thing frowned upon by the owners of the surrounding houses and by the authorities, as these animals cause damage to the abandoned buildings still standing. Because of the wild boars, on February 25 Kato was arrested: he is accused of having freed some wild boars that had been blocked by the traps specially set up by the forest guards. Some volunteers take care of the cats in his absence. Yumiko Konishi, a Tokyo vet who occasionally helps Kato, says at least one of the cats has died since her arrest.
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