One Is A Lonely Number...!

I found a story over at KnowledgeNutsthat I felt needed to be shared with everyone.

This is the story of a single man doing what he can under dire circumstances to care for those unable to care for themselves. The fact that those he is caring for are animals is not important to him. All he knows is that someone needed to do something to help them, and he stepped up when no one else would. To him the answer was simple and humane. Go and care for the animals to the best of his ability, regardless of what the authorities say!

The Most Radioactive (And Lonely) Man In Japan

By Nolan Moore on Friday, April 11, 2014

After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, the citizens of Tomioka, Japan were ordered to evacuate. Today, the city is still a ghost town, totally uninhabited except for one man. His name is Naoto Matsumura, and he returned to Tomioka to take care of the town’s animals.

Naoto Matsumura is a rice farmer living in Tomioka, Japan. In fact, he’s the only person living in Tomioka, Japan. The city is only 9.5 kilometers (6 mi) away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and after a devastating tsunami led to a nuclear meltdown in 2011, the government quickly evacuated the little town. Naoto cleared out with his parents, but then he started worrying about the animals he’d left behind. Unwilling to let his livestock starve, he jumped into his pickup truck and headed back to Tomioka, one of the most radioactive sites in Japan.

When the Fukushima Daiichi plant started spewing radiation, it leaked the equivalent of 168 Hiroshimas into the surrounding environment. While today the town sits outside of the “exclusion zone,” when Naoto went back in 2011, the city was a hotbed of radioactivity. In fact, anyone in Tomioka would expose themselves to 17 times the amount of radiation a normal person comes into contact with on a daily basis. Nevertheless, Naoto ignored the police barricades and drove inside. He was a man on a mission.

When Naoto first returned, he was shocked to see how many animals had been abandoned. The government had assured evacuees they’d come back in no time, so the frightened citizens left behind their dogs and cats. Now, the animals were hungry and thirsty, many of them trapped inside buildings or still tied up. Concerned, Naoto started driving through town, rescuing animals in distress and making sure all of them had enough food and water. Eventually, most of the pets wandered off into the woods, but Naoto still had his work cut out for him.

Quite a few people in Tomioka were farmers, and their livestock was dying in droves. In one grisly scene, Naoto found 120 dead cows inside a barn, all of which had died of starvation. Eventually, the government decided to wipe out all the animals for their own good. However, Naoto stepped up and said, “I will take care of them.” Since then, he’s built a corral out of pipes, with plenty of room for his 31 cows to move around. In addition to the bovines, Naoto is caring for two cats, one dog, one horse, four wild pigs, and even an ostrich. No doubt about it, Naoto is a busy man.

However, life is pretty tough for the animals’ champion. There’s no electricity in town so he cranks up generators at night and uses a solar panel to charge his computer and cell phone. Sustenance is also a major issue, and for a while, Naoto ate and drank contaminated food and water. Now that his cause has received media attention, he relies on relief supplies or occasionally makes trips to pick up goods and gas. Of course, the real concern is the radiation that permeates the town. While today Tomioka is relatively safe (though still largely abandoned), that wasn’t always the case. In fact, doctors told Naoto he has the highest level of radiation exposure in Japan. However, after they said he probably wouldn’t get sick for 30 or 40 more years, he stopped worrying about getting cancer and focused strictly on his animals. “I’ll most likely be dead by then anyway,” he mused, “so I couldn’t care less.”

We often hear talk of someone walking the walk and not just talking the talk, but this man is just doing what his heart tells him is the right thing. In doing so, I can say that he has certainly earned my respect! I can honestly say that he is a much better man than I am!
>br/> Coffee out on the patio this morning! Want to help weed the garden?