Wild radioactive boars have been caught running around the deserted town and have even attacked people.
Where once 21,500 people used to live only a trickle are now returning to their former homes.
One of them, Shoichiro Sakamoto, now hunts the rampant beasts encroaching on residential areas in nearby Tomioka.
The 69-year-old has a squad of 13 ready to catch the animals in traps before killing them with air rifles.
They are now having to be shot (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
The boars have been known to wonder the streets (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
The boars are then kept in a cage before being shot (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
People trying to move back will not need permission to stay round the clock after Japan lifts evacuation orders for parts of Namie and three other towns at the end of March.
But the menace of radioactive violent wild boars has worried returning residents.
One scared former seed merchant, Hidezo Sato, declared: ‘Something must be done.’
Sakamoto said: ‘Wild boars in this town are not scared of people these days.’
Adding: ‘They stare squarely at us as if saying, “What in the world are you doing?” It’s like our town has fallen under wild boars’ control.’
More than 300 have been killed in the towns (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
The 13-man squad uses rice flour as a tempting trap (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
After people left the city and towns around Fukushima the boars came down from the hills and mountainside.
‘It is not really clear now which is the master of the town, people or wild boars,’ said Tamotsu Baba, mayor of Namie, which has been partially cleared for people to return home freely at the end of the month.
‘If we don’t get rid of them and turn this into a human-led town, the situation will get even wilder and uninhabitable.’
They have been putting residents off from returning (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
The boars have become violent at times (Picture: REUTERS/Toru Hanai)
Sakamoto uses rice flour as bait to tempt the boars into cages explaining: ‘After people left, they began coming down from the mountains and now they are not going back.
‘They found a place that was comfortable. There was plenty of food and no one to come after them.’
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