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Pet saviour looks for hope amid Japan's fallout

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A fellow volunteer inside Japan's evacuation zone. Inset: Chizue Lister. (Photos below courtesy Yasusuke Ota)

In her first phone call home to White Rock after arriving in the evacuation zone around Japan’s damaged nuclear power plant last week, Chizue Lister cried for 20 minutes.

She told her husband, Kelly, of the emaciated, dying animals she was finding during her attempt to aid abandoned pets in the area.

“Some of the dairy cows, the condition of them… it’s horrible,” Kelly told Peace Arch News Tuesday. “They’re starving.”

Chizue, 39, returned to her home country last Friday for a 10-day mission to feed and rescue animals who were left behind after their owners within a 20-kilometre radius from the Fukushima facility were evacuated due to radiation concerns.

Earlier this week, Japan raised the severity rating of its nuclear situation to the maximum seven – the same level of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Chizue told PAN before leaving that she planned to stay at her parents’ home in Niigata – which is 200 km from the plant – and use her father’s car to drive to the exclusion zone daily.

Wearing painter’s coveralls, a mask and gloves, Chizue said she would leave food for deserted pets and attempt to catch those that could be driven to shelters.

Kelly said he has spoken with his wife every day, and she sounds better with each conversation.

“You can hear it in her voice every time,” he said. “I think she just gets stronger to make me feel better, but I think she’s also just getting better at taking it.”

Farm animalsChizue has been working with a Japanese friend who is driving dogs to a Tokyo shelter, Kelly said, and the two have also met with other volunteers doing similar work.

“They’re all communicating with each other through the Internet,” he said.

Some of the volunteers have been given specific locations to search by evacuees eager to reunite with their pets.

“The owners or the people that live in the area, a lot of the time they’re contacting this group and they would give them their address.”

Chizue – who told PAN last week that she planned to travel within five kilometres of the plant – was spotted by workers at the nuclear facility, who gave her better protective gear, Kelly said.

And while she is aware of the recently heightened radiation level, she doesn’t plan on leaving early.

“She’s staying, but she’s not being stupid,” Kelly said, noting she is being checked for radiation at screening stations. “She’s not being dumb about it, she is using caution.”

Chizue has felt numerous earthquakes during her trip – in one night, there were seven – and they’re not like those that regularly occurred throughout her childhood.

“She said they’re getting worse every day,” Kelly said. “When she was out in the zone for the first time, she said she could hear the earthquake before it started. She said she looked up and even the colour of the sky was different. She said you could feel it and hear it before it happened.

“She’s never experienced that before.”

Despite the disturbances, she is continuing the work she set out to do.

Kelly said Chizue has come across many animals, including an evasive white dog who would run off with any food she threw to it. When Chizue followed the dog, she discovered it was giving the food to other sick dogs. Chizue fed those dogs in hopes the white one would then eat, but it would instead search out more ill dogs to give its share to.

“That dog kept helping her find them,” Kelly said.

But it’s the farm animals that have really struck a chord with Chizue.

Kelly said many of the volunteers have been told not to feed or kill them because the farmers won’t receive insurance compensation unless the animals die naturally.

Farm animalsChizue and her friend are shooting a video they plan to post on YouTube exposing the situation, in hopes people will help once they see it.

Kelly said the drive Chizue is exhibiting is not unusual. He said she has been volunteering as a dog walker at the BC SPCA every Monday for the last 12 years, and even closes her restaurant – Yucca Tree Café on Johnston Road – Mondays so as not to miss her shift.

Since arriving in Japan, Chizue has been working long hours – sleeping only six hours over one three-day period, he said.

She plans to spend an upcoming night sleeping in her car in the evacuation zone rather than making the long drive back to her parents’ house.

“The way she describes it is probably more than you can imagine,” Kelly said of her experience.

“I’m not sure how to feel. I have to admit I don’t think I would’ve done it. But she’s more determined.”