Satoru Yamauchi was working in his soba noodle shop when the Tohoku earthquake struck on March 11 2011. He remembers escaping to high ground, then going home to rescue his dog, making it back in time to see a “white wall” — the tsunami — roaring in from the Pacific.

The destruction was beyond his imagination. But Mr Yamauchi, and his family, survived. Even their home in the town of Naraha was just high enough to escape the water. Then the next day, city hall ordered an evacuation: there was trouble at the Fukushima nuclear plant, and a friend at Tokyo Electric, the plant’s operator, said it might be serious.

The family headed south and spent three days in an evacuation centre. It was desperately cold. Mr Yamauchi was pressed into duty as a cook, even as the rumours surrounding the condition of the reactors grew ever more terrifying. “My children were saying: ‘We don’t want to die from radiation. Let’s go to Tokyo. Let’s go to Tokyo.’”