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 The bodies of his mother and daughter Erika were found. But Ueno
braves radiation and bitter cold on beaches near the crippled plant
to look for the remains of his father and son Kotaro, then three
years old, to bring closure to his loss.
"My highest duty as a parent was to protect my children, which I
failed to fulfill. That makes me the worst parent, and I have to
apologize to them," Ueno, 43, told Reuters.
"I was able to hold Erika in my arms and say 'I am sorry'. I have
yet to be able to do the same to Kotaro," said Ueno, who lives 22 km
(14 miles) north of the Fukushima nuclear plant.
A magnitude 9 earthquake and towering tsunami on March 11, 2011
killed nearly 16,000 people along Japan's northeastern coast and
left more than 2,500 missing. (For a graphic on Fukushima's 'hot
zone' returnees, click http://tmsnrt.rs/1Rrp0Ku
)
The nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant has made the experience of those who lived nearby
particularly traumatic.
Norio Kimura, who lived 3 km south of the plant, had to choose
between staying behind to search for his father, wife and younger
daughter Yuna, or taking his mother and elder daughter away from
spreading radiation.
"I was torn by having to abandon my search and leave them behind...
By the time I came back, the situation had become quite grim when it
comes to finding them alive," Kimura, 50, said.
HIGH RADIATION
The accident still hampers Kimura's effort to find Yuna, the last
family member missing, as entry into half of his hometown, Okuma, is
restricted due to high radiation levels.
On a recent weekend, Kimura and a dozen volunteers led by Ueno,
combed through piles of debris on a windswept Okuma beach for any
signs of Yuna. They are allowed to enter the area up to 30 times a
year and stay for up to five hours per visit.
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As they dug through heaps of dirt mixed with driftwood, blocks of
concrete, utility poles, crooked iron pipes and clothes of all sizes
and colors, a dosimeter emitted high-pitched beeps. At one point, it
showed six microsieverts per hour, 100 times as high as radiation
levels in downtown Tokyo.
That does not shake Kimura's resolve.
"I'll keep on searching until I find her," Kimura said, adding that
even then he might keep looking for other missing victims.
Such tenacity can be partly explained by views of life and death
widely held in Asia, experts say.
"Once dead, a body itself is often seen and treated as an object in
the West," said Shinichi Niwa, adjunct professor of psychiatry at
Fukushima Medical University's Aizu Medical Center.
"In Asia, there is a strong belief that one's spirit stays with the
body and they are not separated," he said.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka. Editing by Linda Sieg and Bill
Tarrant)
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