We'll never get beaten

March 8, 2013

Evacuated Fukushima farmer pledges not to lose to disaster

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130308p2a00m0na002000c.html

NAKAJIMA, Fukushima -- Back in April 2011, the month after the outbreak of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, some 200 residents from the prefectural village of Iitate gathered at a rally before the entire village was evacuated.

With many shedding tears listening to speeches given by fellow villagers on the podium, the rally was concluded with an outcry, saying, "We'll never get beaten!" The slogan encompassed various untold emotions among residents -- fears, sorrow, anger and so forth.

Among the attendants was Takeshi Yamada, 64, a farmer from Iitate. He was forced to leave his farmland behind but took his cows along to the prefectural village of Nakajima, where he and his wife, Yoko, were evacuated.

"I shouldn't return to my village empty-handed sometime in the future," he thought.

In Nakajima village, Yamada has been breeding Japanese cows by sharing a rented barn with Sadanori Harada, 57, another evacuee from Iitate. Although Nakajima describes himself as "positive," he has mixed emotions when he looks back on the past two years since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster, thinking, "It's already been two years" and other times he feels, "It's only been two years."

Two years ago, when radiation deprived people of their lives in their hometowns, he had a phrase he wanted to direct to radiation: "I will never be beaten!" Now, he wants to say those words to himself.