Maria Gudzii still recalls her sadness when she was forced to evacuate with her family after a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine exploded in April 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.
Thirty-six years on, Gudzii has once again had to flee her home — but this time she has left her country, now in the third month of the Russian invasion, to seek refuge on the other side of the world, in Japan.
Gudzii, 68, lived alone in Kyiv after losing her 62-year-old husband, Myhailo, in 2012 to cancer caused by radiation from the incident at the Chernobyl plant, about 2.5 kilometers from the town of Pripyat. He was involved in work cleaning plant employees' uniforms at the time of the disaster and continued in the job for several years afterward.