For the rest of the world outside Japan, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown of March 2011 may feel like ancient history. But if you took a stroll through the town of Tomoike, Japan, it would seem as if it happened yesterday. Six miles away from the devastated power plant, and within a 12-mile radioactive exclusion zone, the small farming community appears exactly the way it did on that March day, five years ago.
It is a ghost-town – except for one man and his animals.
After the earthquake and ensuing tsunami caused the nuclear meltdown, Naoto Matsumura evacuated just like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, he returned to care for the animals on his farm. And when he did return, he found animals that had been left alone in a panic. They were starving and un-cared for, having been left in houses and barns.
Today, he has 50 cows, two ostriches, and countless dogs, cats and chickens under his attentive care.
“Our dogs didn’t get fed for the first few days,” Matsumura says. “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.”
Since the animals in the region had been exposed to far too much radiation for human consumption, the Japanese government ordered their slaughter in May 2011, one month after the disaster. But Matsumura couldn’t bear the thought of the pointless slaughter of these helpless creatures. In turn, he created and now runs the Ranch of Hope, a sanctuary for all Japan’s radioactive animals.
Matsumura risks his health to care for these animals, and isn’t worried about a thing. When Japanese scientists discovered that he remained in the exclusion zone, they ran tests on him, concluding that his body had been bombarded with 17 times as much radiation as a normal person. Now, he no longer eats contaminated food or drinks radioactive water – his essentials are delivered to him from the outside.
Naoto Matsumura’s courage is more than admirable. He says he isn’t worried about the radiation because, at 55, he’ll “probably be dead anyway” by the time the radiation poisoning sets in. So he lives out his days at the Ranch of Hope, caring for his animals.
