On a chilly night in northeastern Japan, hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, Hiroko Endo was helping care for elderly people at an inland facility in Naraha, a coastal town in Fukushima Prefecture.
On a chilly night in northeastern Japan, hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, Hiroko Endo was helping care for elderly people at an inland facility in Naraha, a coastal town in Fukushima Prefecture.
She hadn't heard from her husband or children all day and was understandably worried.
At one point in the night, with the skies threatening snow, an eerie feeling enveloped her and she heard her husband's voice in her head, soft and low, call out, "It's chilly. It's so cold."
Three months later, Hiroko, 50, cannot forget that night or Nobuhiro Endo's cry for help.
Nobuhiro, 53, had been working at a fishery in Okuma when the earthquake struck. No one has heard from him since.
Two days after March 11, Hiroko finally was able to contact her three children, who had been evacuated farther inland to Nobuhiro's parents' house in Koriyama. She was told that Nobuhiro was missing. She still regrets she did not try to find him sooner.
"I should have gone to look for him immediately after I heard his voice," Hiroko says.
Endo's fish farm association was just 1.5 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The fish farm and the nuclear plant work hand in hand to raise juvenile flatfish and abalone using warm water from the nuclear plant. The fish and mollusks are later released into the sea.
Takayoshi Maruzoe was working at the fish farm with Endo on the afternoon of March 11. After the big one hit at 2:46 p.m., the fish farm suffered significant damage, with water spouting from cracks in water tanks and pipes. Maruzoe remembers Endo running around with a digital camera in hand to record the damage.
With cursory damage checks completed at 3 p.m., employees living nearby with elderly parents or young children were sent home to check up on them. Maruzoe was one of these employees. Four stayed behind, including Nobuhiro Endo. A half-hour later, the massive tsunami roared through the fishery and the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant complex.
At 4 p.m., Maruzoe returned to the fish farm and could not believe the scenes of devastation.
A bridge leading to the facility had been destroyed. After the water receded, he approached the facility and yelled, "Hello!" "Endo-san!"
He kept calling for Endo until dark, but there was no reply.
According to the Fukushima Prefectural Police, 369 people went missing in the prefecture as of June 10. More than 70 percent of them were residents within a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima power plant.
The police said searches for bodies have been delayed because of the leaking radiation at the plant, and bodies being found are in a state of advanced decomposition, making them difficult to identify.
Of the four workers at the fish farm who went missing, one body has been identified, while two others are awaiting DNA testing. The fourth is still missing. The fate of Nobuhiro Endo is still unknown.
Hiroko Endo now lives with her in-laws in Koriyama.
Her worries linger--her job, her children's transfer to a new school, the home she left behind--and the radiation. Always, the radiation.
She wants to visit the site where her husband was last seen--even if just to leave flowers. But she is not allowed. Because of the radiation. The site is within the 3-kilometer off-limits zone where even temporary visits are prohibited.
"I cannot even mourn properly," she says. "I cannot go to the site. My thoughts are in limbo."
She says even if DNA evidence confirms Nobuhiro's death, it would still be hard to accept. She tries not to bring up the topic of Nobuhiro with her children.
"I know he is gone, but it is very difficult to take it," she says. "If I say a word (about his death) everything seems to collapse."
Maruzoe now lives with his daughter in Sendai. He says whenever he turns on his computer he can't help but launch Google Map and look at aerial views of Okuma and where the fishery once stood.
What he sees on the screen is hardly recognizable, but he says he can still make out the fish farm association, the dome-shaped roof stripped off and washed away by the black waters of the tsunami. To the north is a reactor building whose roof was blown off by the hydrogen explosion. A house with a tiled roof west of the reactor building is his. He keeps watching, looking for his missing colleagues.
"I've got to do something," Maruzoe says. "But I cannot enter the area. All I can do is look at the site on the computer screen and hope."