Fukushima five years on: Searching for loved ones

Updated: 2016-03-11 10:46

(Agencies)

Norio Kimura, 50, who lost his father, wife and daughter in the March 11, 2011 tsunami, changes flowers for his family at a stone statue of Jizo and a monument he made for his family on the hill behind his home inside the exclusion zone in Okuma, near Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Feb 13, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Norio Kimura, who lived 3 km south of the plant, had to choose between staying behind to search for his father, wife and younger daughter Yuna, or taking his mother and elder daughter away from spreading radiation.

"I was torn by having to abandon my search and leave them behind... By the time I came back, the situation had become quite grim when it comes to finding them alive," Kimura, 50, said.