The town of Tomioka, located within a 20km radius of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor, is now a designated evacuated zone.
While the city's nearly 15,500 citizens still live as evacuees,
one man continues to live alone in his hometown:
Naoto Matsumura, aged 53
It's so quiet here.
At night it's dead silent.
There are buildings, but no cars or people.
It was crazy at first.
No lights, no sound.
The first week, I was uneasy.
It was too quiet.
I'm used to it now,
but the emotion I felt when I realized I was alone
is indescribable.
'Loneliness' doesn't quite capture it.
That was the toughest thing to get used to.
You could probably ride these.
With training, you could bridle them and ride them to town.
Would they consider that animal abuse?
- Can he ride one for us?
- Can you show us?
I didn't mean to stay at first.
We ran for it when reactor unit 4 exploded.
I thought all the reactors were going to blow.
After reactor 4, I knew it wasn't safe here.
I grabbed my family and escaped.
So I did leave once.
We headed south as it was safer.
My dad suggested that
we go to his little sister's place down south.
But she wouldn't even let us in.
She said we were contaminated by radiation.
So we went to the evacuee shelters but they were full, and turned us away.
It was such a hassle that I decided to come back.
That's when I realized that our animals were still waiting to be fed.
I had no choice but to stay.
I couldn't leave the animals behind.
They needed to be fed.
This is a temporary housing unit. I arrived on August 3, 2011.
Which poses the greater risk,
radiation or evacuation?
We were told that evacuating poses a greater risk than the radiation.
So this is my hometown.
These are rice paddies.
All dried up.
All of it.
Radiation here can be as high as 8 or 9 microsieverts.
That's my house.
This is my home.
The village is called Iitate.
I built a house and some cattle sheds,
and lived here with my family of 8.
I always thought that this was a great village.
It's 45 kilometers from the nuclear power plant.
We never dreamed that the radiation could spread this far.
Looking back, I think the mayor committed a terrible mistake here.
As the village head, he made the wrong decisions.
Even when scientists told the mayor that Iitate was dangerous
he ignored them all.
He brought in experts from around the country, who preached about
how safe it was here.
They said we had nothing to worry about.
They kept telling us that.
Eventually the villagers fell for it and began to relax.
And the mayor rejected the idea of evacuating even more.
That's why nobody left, even though the radiation levels were so high.
Radioactive substances leaked by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco)
have contaminated the soil.
Yet Tepco claims that the radioactive fallout
is bona vacantia, an ownerless object,
so they're not responsible for cleaning it up.
Tepco is an embarrassment to all of us.
After the explosion, I ran home.
My cousin works for Tepco.
We're neighbors so I saw him come home.
I asked what he was doing.
He said he was picking up some clothes.
He asked if I'm evacuating,
so I said no.
Then he bowed and apologized.
I asked if everything was okay.
"It'll be fine in a couple of days."
What a liar! After making his own family flee!
Horrible, right?
He lied right to the end.
That's how brainwashed the Tepco staff are.
Just like a cult.
They're brainwashed.
They believe that nuclear power plants
are completely safe and accident-proof.
When that explosion happened
the Tepco guys fled to the quake-proof tower.
After a while there,
they heard a loud BOOM!
Afterwards, I asked them what they thought it was.
They all thought it was a missile
from North Korea, because nuclear power plants aren't meant to explode.
Once you enter a radiation controlled area,
you aren't supposed to drink water, let alone eat anything.
The idea that somebody
is living in a place like that
is unimaginable.
The cows in the barns died.
Over a thousand.
Hundreds of thousands of caged chickens died too.
This is my farm.
High cesium here.
6 microsieverts.
Before I came in, the entire area was overgrown.
The owner's rice paddies. Now, no one will ever buy rice from here.
The owner's decided never to grow rice again.
He's left the paddies to me.
I let the cows roam free so they'll eat the weeds.
I put up some fences and freed the cows.
My feelings have changed in the 2 years that I've been here.
At first, I let the animals fend for themselves
but now I want to take care of them.
Otherwise they'd be slaughtered.
I'm opposed to killing off the animals in the zone.
So many of their fellow cattle died in pain.
These are happy and healthy
yet the government wants them slaughtered.
If there's a purpose,
if they're for human consumption, I wouldn't care.
That's just how life is.
But why slaughter them for no reason?
Why bury them?
Just because they're here.
I'm against that.
To me, animals and people are equal.
Would they kill people just as indiscreetly?
At first, we were living off this water.
We'd collect it like this. It's clean.
I went up the mountain,
dug a hole, and stuck a hose in.
Mushrooms are contaminated.
I'd pick them anyway.
And stash them.
- And then?
I'll eat them eventually.
Radiation exposure causes cellular damage.
But the cells will eventually return to normal.
In rare instances, cells may remain damaged, posing the risk of cancer.
Dosage is irrelevant.
Regardless of whether it's 100 millisieverts or 1 millisievert,
if cesium enters the body there will be cellular damage.
We ask our patients to avoid ingesting anything that could be contaminated.
At first, I was worried about getting cancer or leukemia in 5 or 10 years.
Now I don't worry.
I got a checkup at the University of Tokyo.
They had this thing that looked like a cremator.
I lay down on it.
They shut the door. I was in there for 18 minutes.
18 minutes later they opened the door, and I was let out.
The doctor was staring at me, so
I asked him how it was.
He said I had the highest radiation
level in Japan.
But that I wouldn't get sick for 30 or 40 years.
I'll be dead by then anyway.
My grandkids always dropped by on their way to preschool.
They'd watch the cattle, take a walk around, and head to school.
Every day.
They loved the cows.
I almost wish I could forget.
My wife and I took care of the cattle over the years.
If the cattle aren't milked they'd get ill,
so we'd milk them and throw it out.
We did that for a long time.
These are the numbers we assigned to all of our cattle.
All of their individual numbers.
The ones marked red are the cattle who were here until the end.
The black numbers show the order my son decided the cattle should be slaughtered.
We started with the worst.
In the end, we had no choice but to dispose of them all.
Everyone views all cattle as the same.
But that's not true.
At all.
My favorite memory?
I don't have any anymore.
[Special Security Zone No Illegal Dumping]
They all died.
It still smells a bit.
It was pure hell.
Some had died
and others were still living amongst the dead.
They all starved to death.
We had dogs here, too.
When I was feeding the dogs I could see the dead cattle.
But a mother and calf were still alive.
Both skin and bones.
They hadn't had food or water for a month.
The calf was so hungry it kept trying to nurse from its mother.
But the mother knew she didn't have any milk to give,
so she kicked it away.
But the calf returned,
and got kicked again.
But it didn't give up.
After 3 kicks, the calf got the message.
There was some rope hanging from the wall of the pen.
The end of the rope must have looked like a teat,
because it went over and tried to nurse from it.
I couldn't bare to watch.
They both died a few days later.
That sort of thing happened in droves here.
There was no way we could save them all.
I just hoped they wouldn't suffer long.
They were at the point of no return.
Nature is amazing when you're a kid.
There's rivers, oceans, mountains.
You have fish in the rivers and oceans, and wild plants in the mountains.
There's food to be found everywhere.
That's how we enjoyed nature.
But we've lost it all.
There's no telling how long it will take to recover.
I've no choice but to die in Tomioka.
I still have 30 years or so.
- You're still going strong. - That's right.
I'm not going to die.
- You don't seem like you'd go down easily.