The man who saves forgotten cats in Fukushima's nuclear zone
A decade ago, Sakae Kato stayed behind to rescue cats abandoned by neighbours who fled the radiation clouds belching from the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant. He won't leave.
"I want to make sure I am here to take care of the last one," he said from his home in the contaminated quarantine zone. "After that I want to die, whether that be a day or hour later."
Left: Unuma looks into her former home.
Right: A bamboo tree grows inside Unuma's former home.
Left: A radiation dosimeter shows a reading of 1.89 microsievert per hour at Unuma's family graveyard.
Right: Unuma wears a protective suit as she makes her way to her family's graveyard.
Story
Before making the four-hour drive back to her new home, Unuma visits the Ranch of Hope, a cattle farm owned by Masami Yoshizawa, who defied an order to cull his irradiated livestock in protest against the government and Tokyo Electric Power.
Among the 233 bullocks still there is the last surviving bullock from the 50-strong herd Unuma used to tend, and one of her last living links to the life she had before the disaster.
Her bullock ignores her when she tries to lure him over, so Yoshizawa gives her a handful of cabbage to try to tempt him.
"The thing about cattle, is that they really only think about food," Yoshizawa said.
An abandoned car sits in a restricted zone in Futaba.
An abandoned house stands in a restricted zone in Futaba.
Kato walks past black bags containing contaminated soil.
Kato holds Mokkun, a rescued cat, while an animal rescue activist applies an ointment onto its mouth at Kato's house.
Cats rescued by Kato.
Kato cleans cat cages.
Kato pets a rescued cat.
Kato eats dinner.
Kato prepares food for abandoned and feral cats at an abandoned barn.
An animal rescue activist holds a bowl of bait that is used to trap and rescue abandoned feral cats.
Kato holds a flash light in his mouth as he climbs up a ladder onto the second floor of an abandoned house that he converted into a cat shelter on his property.
Kato prepares to feed wild boars.
Kato's house.
Unuma works on her farm where she has settled down after being evacuated from her home in Fukushima, in Kazu.
Unuma wears a protective suit as she walks past an incinerator used to burn debris collected in the Fukushima clean up which was built in a rural village near Unuma's collapsing home close to the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant .
Unuma wears a protective suit as she prays at her family's graveyard on the anniversary of her husband's passing.
Masami Yoshizawa tows a figure of a bullock from his van while shouting protest slogans in front of an office building where a unit of Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) operates the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Yoshizawa takes a break after feeding cattle at the ranch of Hope, which has protected hundreds of abandoned cattle from the government's kill order that was imposed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Bullocks stand on a field at the ranch of Hope.
A bullocks's skull sits on top of a cross on a wall that bears a nuclear symbol at the ranch of Hope.
