A-bomb survivor and anti-nuke activist from disaster area tell their stories

[AsahinaKimi]

By Chikahiro Hiroiwa, Expert Senior Writer/Mainichi Daily News

The late novelist Hisashi Inoue, who loved the Tohoku region, where he was from, said: "The guarantee that people's standard of living will gradually improve and be sustained is the true meaning of peace."

For the people hardest hit by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, that standard of living was ripped apart. Two survivors of the disaster -- a dairy farmer who experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and a former high school teacher now engaged in an anti-nuclear campaign -- talked to the Mainichi about the peaceful lives they lost to the massive tsunami on March 11 and the nuclear power plant crisis.

The farmer, 85-year-old Minoru Oka, said that his home remains intact and all 60 cows at his dairy farm survived because his property, in the Ouchi district of Minami-Soma, is on a hill. The area at the foot of the hill, however, was transformed into a muddy plain after the houses and farmland there were swept away by the tsunami.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20110430p2a00m0na001000c.html

[Kurovski]

1. K&R. (nt)