Some 78,000 people lived here; only a handful have been permitted to return. Cobwebs spread across storefronts. Mushrooms sprout from living-room floors. Weeds swallow train tracks. A few roads, shaken by the earthquake, are cantilevered like rice paddies. Near the coastline, boats borne inland by the tsunami still litter main roads.
Only the animals were left behind, and their picture is not pretty. Starving pigs have eaten their own. Cats and dogs scavenge for food. On one farm, the Tochimotos’, the skulls of 20 cows dangle from their milking tethers.
Several thousand Fukushima workers, draped in white protective gear, pass daily through the front gates of the plant, site of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
But beyond the plant, for at least 12 miles in any direction, the Japanese government maintains a no-entry zone, with teams of policemen sealing off all roads going in.
Nobody is allowed to live there — a condition that could continue for decades.
If the dormant Chernobyl plant in Ukraine provides any guide, the land surrounding the Fukushima facility will one day grow wild, with villages eventually bulldozed and buried. Maybe decades from now, Japan will tailor the area to adventure-seeking tourists, or it will use the region as a wildlife preserve. For now, though, the land surrounding the nuclear plant still preserves the history of those who were told to abandon it.
The area is dangerous over long periods, with many spots even 10 miles away from the plant showing radiation levels exceeding those at the facility’s main gate. But spend a full day driving through all parts of the no-entry zone and the risks are minimal, with a total exposure comparable with that from a 12-hour plane ride or two chest X-rays.
Only emergency workers and select residents with special permits are allowed to enter the zone, and only for brief trips. When two Washington Post reporters rode into the zone by traveling with a local rancher, only a few cars whizzed along the main roads. The rancher, Masami Yoshizawa, said that only about 1,000 of the area’s 3,500 cows are still alive. At one point, while driving, he spotted a few brown cows with yellow tags on their ears.
“Those are probably mine,” he said.
Many who once lived close to the nuclear plant have felt severed from their previous lives. But Yoshizawa’s case shows an alternative torment: He makes daily visits to his now-contaminated farmland, preferring a dangerous reminder of his old life to no reminder at all.
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