Naoto isn’t a normal person, of course. He initially fled south with his parents during the nuclear disaster, but he ended up leaving them in Iwaki and returning to Tomioka. His reason for doing so wasn’t a sentimental love for home or a middle-aged man’s refusal to change, however. It was simple: he couldn’t abandon the animals on his family farm. “I was scared at first because I knew the radiation had spread everywhere,” he said of his initial days back home. “The next thought in my head was that if I stayed too long, I’d end up with cancer or leukemia. But, the longer I was with the animals, the more I came to see that we were all still healthy and that we would be OK.” Matsumura now cares for the cattle, pigs, cats, dogs, and even ostriches that are now ownerless, a responsibility he took on partly by accident. “Our dogs didn’t get fed for the first few days. When I did eventually feed them, the neighbors’ dogs started going crazy. I went over to check on them and found that they were all still tied up. Everyone in town left thinking they would be back home in a week or so, I guess. From then on, I fed all the cats and dogs every day. They couldn’t stand the wait, so they’d all gather around barking up a storm as soon as they heard my truck. Everywhere I went there was always barking. Like, ‘we’re thirsty’ or, ‘we don’t have any food.’ So I just kept making the rounds.”
Read the rest of this touching story (titled "Radioactive Man") at Vice.com
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