People I Met While Supporting the Victims of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident
By Kawata Masaharu, Non-profit organization to Help Chernobyl, Chubu-District, Japan
Introduction
It was in April 1990, four years after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, that we began to support the people in the affected areas. 40 years after the accident, the Ukrainian people are now living in a difficult situation due to the Russian invasion that began in February 2022. I would like to share with you some of the memorable experiences I have had during our support activities in Ukraine.
1. The Life of the Samosely
Narodychi Village, located 70 kilometers west of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, has the highest level of radioactive contamination in Ukraine. During the Soviet era, 20 thousand of its 30 thousand residents were forcibly relocated to safe areas. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992, Ukraine became an independent country, but its economy failed, and the remaining 10 thousand residents were left behind in the contaminated area. The residents of the village had internal levels of Cs137 ranging from 104 Bq to several 104 Bq. Our NPO has been supporting this village for many years. In an uninhabited village nearby, there was a small church that was 160 years old and a cultural heritage site. Whenever we visited the village, the door was always open, and despite the fact that there was supposed to be no one around, the room was always well cleaned and decorated with wildflowers.
Passing through the village in September 2001, we saw an old woman walking with two cows. Curious, we stopped the car and I talked to her. She told me that her name was Anastasia Ivanovna (nicknamed Nastya), and that she was 72 years old. When I asked her why she was there, she said, “I was born and raised here, and I have no family, so I decided to die here.” In Ukraine, people like Nastya are called “samosely,” selfish people. She had two cows and kept chickens and bees. “I get up when the sun rises and go to sleep when the sun sets. I am living with God in nature.” On a hunch, I asked her about the church. “Oh, yes. That’s me. It’s two kilometers from my house, but I clean it every day unless the weather is really bad.” I was impressed that humans could be so strong. Nastya died five years later. In February 2022, a week after the invasion, Russian troops bombed and destroyed the church. How sad she would have been if she had still been alive.
2. The Tragedy of Chernobyl
On April 26, 2016, commemorating 30 years since the Chernobyl disaster, I visited Ukraine together with 20 people from Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture. The day after the memorial gathering, we visited “Zemlyaki” (meaning people from the same hometown), a group of people living in a community on the outskirts of Kyiv. This group consists of residents who were forcibly relocated from the city of Pripyat, where the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located, a week after the accident. We have often visited the Zemlyaki group. On this day, children dressed in traditional costumes welcomed us with the songs “Furusato” and “I Look Up As I Walk” (well known as the “Sukiyaki Song”), singing them in Japanese for us. We were both startled and moved. The painful feelings of a lost hometown are shared by people of all countries. We felt the Zemlyaki people’s strong desire, whatever has happened in the past, to look up as they walk. We soon joined in the singing together.
On November 16 last year, I received an email from Tamara Krasichka, the representative of Zemlyaki. “Natalia Khodemchuk died yesterday when the Russians bombed her apartment in the Zemlyaki community.” I met Natalia sometimes when I visited Zemlyaki. Her husband, Valeriy Khodemchuk, who had worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was 35 years old at the time of the accident. On the fateful day, he was inside Unit 4 nuclear power building when it exploded. There was not enough time for a rescue, and he ended up being trapped inside the nuclear power plant, where he still remains inside the sarcophagus. He is known as the first Ukrainian victim of Chernobyl. Before the war, Natalia and her daughter Larry, who was six years old at the time of the accident, visited the Chernobyl nuclear power plant every year to mourn for her husband inside the sarcophagus. This time, Natalia was killed by a Russian bomb. We can only pray that Valeriy and Natalia are together again in heaven.
