Hidekatsu Ouchi, 67, was on the phone again to the schoolgirls who were 750 kilometers away in Hiroshima Prefecture.
He was receiving calls from the teenagers every month--and always looking forward to the chats. The three high school students would take it in turns to talk to him.
“I want to take back my daily life that is full of nature," he told them. "I have many things that I want to do.”
While talking, Ouchi was also smiling, and the light laughter of the students could be heard flowing out from his mobile phone.
He went on to tell them that as the temperature had risen, about half of the flowers on the Japanese “ume” apricot trees nearby had already blossomed and a skating rink he created in a rice field had completely melted.
But then the topic changed and the smile faded from Ouchi's face and the girls' laughter ceased.
“All of the residents here have been scattered. My ties with them have collapsed. I am lamenting that,” said Ouchi as the conversation moved on to the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011 and the mass evacuation in its aftermath.
Ouchi was talking to the schoolgirls in February back at his old house in the Yamakiya district of Kawamata in Fukushima Prefecture. He was there on an experimental basis to prepare for a full-fledged return home.
Of course it wasn't quite the same nowadays. How could it be when all the residents had been forced out of the area for years after the triple meltdown at the nuclear plant triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami?
The teenage girls making the joint call to Ouchi were members of the Human Rights Club of Eishin Junior and Senior High School in Fukuyama.
Ouchi's family, tragically, has a history of being involved in a nuclear crisis.
In 1945, Ouchi’s father, Saichi, who was a military medic, entered central Hiroshima several days after a U.S. atomic bomb flattened the city and was exposed to radiation. After the war, he returned to his hometown of Kawamata and became a farmer. He and his wife raised four children, including Ouchi.
Saichi avoided talking about his experience as a radiation sufferer. But Ouchi remembered that when he was in poor physical condition during his infant days, Saichi murmured, “It is because of my exposure to radiation.”
When the nuclear accident occurred, Saichi was living in a special nursing home for the aged in Iitate, nearly 40 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Both Iitate and the Yamakiya district where Ouchi lived were designated as evacuation zones. Ouchi evacuated from Yamakiya to the northern part of Kawamata. But his father and others at the nursing home were spared from evacuation because it was thought the physical burden of such a move might prove too much for the elderly to endure.
Two months after the March 2011 nuclear accident, Maho Yamamoto, then a second-year student of Eishin Senior High School, read about Saichi's story in a newspaper.
In those days, she was collecting signatures for a petition demanding a nuclear-free world. Reading the article, she felt that the wishes of someone who had once been exposed to radiation from the U.S. atomic bombing were crushed.
Yamamoto thought she wanted to see Fukushima with her own eyes and visited Ouchi’s family with her friends. Saichi was not able to talk fluently after suffering a stroke. However, he said, “I am very happy” and shook hands with Yamamoto and her friends.
Since then, students of Eishin Senior High School have called Ouchi and written letters to him every month. In 2014, Saichi died at the age of 84. However, their exchanges with Ouchi’s family continued. And Ouchi sometimes sends them vegetables he grows himself.
Yamamoto, now 21, is studying in Germany about energy policies that decrease dependence on nuclear power. From there, she still sends letters to Ouchi.
“Our relations with Ouchi’s family are unwavering. I feel that it is important to keep a long-lasting bond,” she said.
Ai Takahashi, one of the three girls who talked to Ouchi on the phone in February, was just a fifth-grader in elementary school when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in 2011. She visited Ouchi's family members in 2013 and has since taken over the responsibility of the exchanges with them.
“When I talk (with Ouchi) on the phone, I feel that I am connecting with Fukushima. I want to continue this exchange, and I also want my juniors to do so,” said Takahashi, now 16.
On March 11 this year, Takahashi talked about the exchanges with Ouchi’s family in front of all the students of her school.
Ouchi is now waiting for the evacuation order to be lifted. He is also looking forward to receiving telephone calls from the students.
“The students say that they will continue to side with us, and they will never forget us. I am happy with that," Ouchi says with a calm look on his face. "I want to show them our Yamakiya district that will be born again.”