Photo/Illutration Yoichi Yatsuda’s house is the only one with a light on in the Nagatsuka district, Futaba town, Fukushima Prefecture, on Jan. 22. He returned with his wife after the evacuation order was lifted. (Shigetaka Kodama)

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a five-part series looking at the lives of people in Fukushima Prefecture with a particular focus on their meals 12 years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Through their meals, the series depicts how the nuclear power plant disaster totally changed people’s lives in the region.

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FUTABA, Fukushima Prefecture--In the Nagatsuka district here, the lights of only one house could be seen in the darkness at dinnertime on a recent evening. 

Before the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami turned lives upside down, there were about 60 households in the district that illuminated the night during evening meals. 

Yoichi Yatsuda, 71, and his wife are the only residents who have returned to live in the district since the evacuation order was lifted in August last year.

The order had been in place due to the high levels of radiation detected following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, partly located in Futaba town, after it was swamped by the tsunami. 

Today, most of the houses have been demolished and only about 10 remain. But most of the remaining ones will soon be demolished.

“Initially, I thought three to four households would come back. But the town is still like this even though it’s been six months (since the order was lifted),” Yatsuda said on Jan. 22. 

His 55-year-old wife said, “If other residents had returned, they could be eating dinner at this time, like us.”

“Sometimes I get lonely when I think about that,” she said.

Futaba town set the target for the residential population, including returning residents and those who have relocated, at about 1,500 in the three to four years after the evacuation order was lifted.

However, the current population in the town is far from the goal. There are no ATMs in Futaba and no mailbox near Yatsuda’s house.

“When I go to the next town, I have to go to the post office to take care of business,” he said. “To be honest, I feel that reconstruction is not progressing.”

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This house was demolished in the Nagatsuka district, Futaba town, Fukushima Prefecture. The photo was taken on Jan. 22. (Shigetaka Kodama)

Yatsuda is currently suffering from chronic pancreatitis.

On the morning of Jan. 22, he was in so much pain that he could not eat anything.

“I can’t eat greasy foods such as meat,” he said. “Such food stimulates my pancreas, which creates too much pancreatic juice and causes extreme pain. It feels like my body is melting.”

That is why his meals are planned with his physical condition as the top priority.

Many of his meals are only boiled vegetables topped with dried bonito flakes.

His wife has also become accustomed to eating food without much flavor and can now eat salad without dressing. If she puts dressing on it, she even feels it is salty, she said.

Although they enjoy eating out with their children and grandchildren who live far from them, they prefer to eat at home.

“It took 11 years for a light at dinnertime to return to the town,” Yatsuda said. “I hope this light will spread to the entire town.”

But he said anxiously, “If my symptoms become so severe that I am bedridden, I will not be able to live here.”

His wife said with a sigh, “People cannot live in isolation.”

Outside the window, the only illumination came from the stars that twinkled in the cold and dark sky.

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Yoichi Yatsuda, right, and his wife in their home in Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, on Jan. 22 (Shigetaka Kodama)

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