Photos: The man who saves forgotten cats in Fukushima's nuclear zone

Sakae Kato holds a rescued cat, while an animal rescue activist applies an ointment onto its mouth. | Fukushima, Japan: A decade ago, Sakae Kato stayed behind to rescue cats abandoned by neighbours who fled the radiation clouds belching from the nearby Fukushima nuclear plant. He won't leave.

So far he has buried 23 cats in his garden, the most recent graves disturbed by wild boars that roam the depopulated community. He is looking after 41 others in his home and another empty building on his property.

Kato leaves food for feral cats in a storage shed he heats with a paraffin stove. He has also rescued a dog, Pochi. With no running water, he has to fill bottles from a nearby mountain spring, and drive to public toilets.

Sakae Kato cleans cat cages at his home. | The 57-year-old, a small construction business owner in his former life, says his decision to stay as 160,000 other people evacuated the area was spurred in part by the shock of finding dead pets in abandoned houses he helped demolish. The cats also gave him a reason to stay on land that has been owned by his family for three generations.

Decontamination in fields near his house signal that other residents will soon be allowed to return. He estimates he spends $7,000 a month on his animals, part of it to buy dog food for wild boar that gather near his house at sunset. Farmers consider them pests, and also blame them for wrecking empty homes.

Yumiko Konishi, a vet from Tokyo who helps Kato, said local volunteers were caring for the cats on his property, but at least one had died since he was detained.

Hisae Unuma wears a protective suit as she prays at her family's graveyard. | About 30 km southeast, still in the restricted zone, Hisae Unuma is also surveying the state of her home, which withstood the earthquake a decade ago but is now close to collapsing after years of being battered by wind, rain and snow.

Hisae Unuma wears a protective suit as she walks past an incinerator used to burn debris collected in the Fukushima clean up. | Unuma fled as the cooling system at Tokyo Electric Power Co's nuclear plant 2.5 km away failed and its reactors began to melt down. The government, which has adopted Fukushima as a symbol of national revival amid preparations for Tokyo Olympic Games, is encouraging residents to return to decontaminated land.

Hisae Unuma works on her farm. | Lingering fears about the nuclear plant, jobs and poor infrastructure are keeping many away, though. Unuma, now a vegetable farmer in Saitama prefecture near Tokyo, where her husband died three years ago, won't return even if the government scrapes the radioactive soil off her fields.

A radiation dosimeter shows a reading of 1.89 microsievert per hour. | Radiation levels around her house are around 20 times the background level in Tokyo, according to a dosimeter reading carried out by Reuters. Only the removal of Fukushima's radioactive cores will make her feel safe, a task that will take decades to complete.

Hisae Unuma looks into her home that she lived in before being evacuated. | Before making the four-hour drive back to her new home, Unuma visits the Ranch of Hope, a cattle farm owned by Masami Yoshizawa, who defied an order to cull his irradiated livestock in protest against the government and Tokyo Electric Power.

Among the 233 bullocks still there is the last surviving bullock from the 50-strong herd Unuma used to tend, and one of her last living links to the life she had before the disaster.