Japan 2011 Triple Disaster 2: Iitate dog rescue, Fukushima

Over two days I travel around Fukushima Prefecture with Hazuki Kajiwara, who I met at the Minding Animals conference in Mexico in January 2018, where we were both presenting on an ‘Animals in Disasters’ panel. Hazuki’s PhD is on companion animals and the Japan 2011 Triple Disaster – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, and when I came to Japan, she kindly agreed to show me around Iitate District, Soma County, Fukushima Prefecture, where she did some of her field work.

We take the bullet train from Tokyo ninety minutes north to Fukushima City, which lies in the centre of Honshu with mountains to the west, and hill-ranges to the east; hire a car and drive east to visit a dog and cat rescue centre in IItate Village in the hills between Fukushima City and the Fukushima coast.

After the reactor meltdown in March 2011, the government ordered an evacuation of the area and forbade people from taking animals with them. Some people left their companion animals to roam free, but others left them shut in, or tied up outside (normal practice in the rural farming communities). A few owners smuggled their pets out or went back in afterwards to save them, but most didn’t. As a result, it is estimated that up to 18,000 dogs and cats died of starvation, shut in, tied up, or unable to fend for themselves.

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It is less clear how many other animals – production animals, horses, wild animals – were in the evacuation zone. We pass an old, deserted dairy farm by the road, but much of rural Fukushima is forested hills. Any farm animals that survived the early period were barred from the food chain and probably slaughtered during the later decontamination process, but statistics are not available. Soma County has a long equestrian tradition, but the fate of horses remains unclear. Of wild animals, a group of about five monkeys sit by the road as we drive past, and a small family of wild pigs disappears into the woods. There seem few birds, but it is Autumn, and as we drive, we don’t have time to spend looking.

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Iitate was apparently not in the immediate evacuation zone but was included when the evacuation zone became an exclusion zone.

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The Iitate dog and cat rescue started in 2011 to rescue some of the cats and dogs left behind in the initial evacuation zone. Various individuals and groups rescued or fed dogs and cats after the disaster, using different approaches and with different levels of regularity and commitment. Rescued dogs were put up for adoption whenever possible. However, some have complicated stories: broken homes or owners still involved in some way and refusing what might be a better life for their animals. Some owners still see no problem in leaving dogs tied up all the time and will not allow them to be rehomed while volunteers are prepared to feed them and take them for occasional short walks. The values of the rescuers and owners are at odds and this causes conflict, on top of the problems already faced by the dogs. Nevertheless, although rescued and rehomed animals were a tiny percentage of those left behind in the evacuation, the publicity they have generated has shone a light on a dark situation and it is hoped practice will change in future as it did in the US after Hurricane Katrina.

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The Iitate centre currently has fifteen dogs and ten cats. Arriving on a Sunday afternoon, we meet four volunteers: Kanto-san (Mrs Kanto) who is currently the main volunteer looking after the centre; a man who comes up from Tokyo three weekends a month to help; and two women from Asakusa, Tokyo, who collect money and dog food from others in Tokyo and come up from time to time to deliver it.

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We help walk the dogs on both days and visit some of the supported animals. Walking the dogs means just short lead walks up and down the road as there don’t seem to be open rural tracks, or footpaths through the woods, and none of the dogs seem trained to walk off (or on!) the lead.

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