(Erico Waga/ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST ) - While the Japanese government blocked the sale of milk from areas in Japan near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Mrs Mineko Okubo's love of milking the cows has not diminished. Her career in farming begun with only 4 cows in 1967.
MINAMI SOMA, Japan — The clockwork rhythms of Motoo and Mineko Okubo’s dairy farm halted one by one.
A shiny silver truck that collected their milk each day at dawn stopped coming. Then their newspapers didn’t get delivered; the local post office didn’t open and a vet who helped keep their 60 cows healthy disappeared.
For decades, fear of contamination radiating from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had been a nagging but abstract anxiety. In just a few hours, it had become their terrifying reality.
But as neighbors fled and schools, banks, shops, a library and a nearby clinic closed, the Okubos decided to stay. “We couldn’t just throw everything away,” said Mineko Okubo, donning a face-mask as she prepared to go outside — something the government has advised people so close to Fukushima Daiichi not to do — to milk their cows.
Though just outside a mandatory 12-mile mandatory evacuation zone, the Okubos’ farm is only 15 miles from the radiation-belching power station. Anyone living so close, Japanese authorities decreed on March 14, should “stay indoors” to avoid potentially hazardous exposure to the air.
“Stay indoors? What do they mean ‘Stay indoors’?” fumed Motoo Okubo, recalling his dismay at an order that trampled on the habits and duties of a lifetime. “What am I supposed to do about my cows? They’re all outside and I have to feed them.”
Authorities last week revised their position and urged all those still in the “stay indoors” zone to consider “voluntary evacuation.” The reason, they said, was not increased radiation risk but a shortage of food and other supplies.
Though largely unscathed by a gigantic earthquake on March 11 and a tsunami that followed — the Okubos’ only casualty was a shrine in the living room that fell over — they now struggle with a threat they can’t see and barely understand. Invisible isotopes leaking from the six-reactor nuclear complex just down the coast have left the couple and their 40-year-old son Masahiko living in a virtual ghost town.
The danger may or may not be grave, but one thing is certain: Confusing and often contradictory announcements by jittery officials in Tokyo and shifty obfuscation by Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives have already stripped the Okubos of their livelihood, their peace of mind and the fruit of decades of labor.
Confusing data on risks
Of Minami Soma’s pre-quake population of about 70,000, more than 50,000 have left. Once well-lighted, immaculately clean streets are now dark, dirty and mostly empty of traffic except for emergency vehicles and Self-Defense Force trucks and jeeps.
“Nobody wants to come here now,” said Sadayasu Abe, a senior official in the local government. His own house is in the compulsory evacuation zone, so he sleeps in his office, which is slightly farther away from Fukushima Daiichi. He’s sent his wife and children away.
Radiation data released daily by the regional government, however, show just how difficult it is to work out who is and who isn’t at risk. Fukushima City, the regional capital, is much farther from Fukushima Daiichi than Minami Soma but has far higher radiation readings. The level of hazard depends not just on distance but a host of often inscrutable factors such as local topography and wind patterns.
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