By Kyung Lah
Tsukuba, Japan (CNN) - Many who lived near the Fukushima nuclear plant when it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami last year consider themselves lucky to be alive.
But there's one survivor who escaped death a second time when his apartment building near the plant was destroyed by a rare tornado last week.
A tornado in Japan ripped across a suburban neighborhood. Debris was left in its wake, cars crushed, a building shredded, and belongings trashed.
A freak tornado that causes this sort of damage in the country comes maybe once a decade.
But it's the second disaster Seiichi Ohkawa has survived in one year.
"I thought I was going to die," he said.
That's how he felt last year at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Ohkawa was working inside the nuclear plant when the 9.0 quake hit.
Then he and his wife became evacuees. Their house, just miles from the plant, became and remains a radioactive wasteland.
They tried to move on, going from temporary shelter to shelter, finally settling down in Tsukuba.
"I don't know whether we're unlucky because we got hit twice by disaster or we're lucky that we survived both," he said.
A tornado is extraordinarily rare, something that's almost never seen in Japan. It touched down and traveled about 10 miles, damaging hundreds of homes, killing one teenager.
An apartment building, one of the taller buildings, took the brunt of the destruction, and it's where 20 evacuees from the area around the Fukushima nuke plant were calling home.
"I can't believe this happened to them," said Miyuki Takada. "This isn't supposed to happen."
Ohkawa and his wife narrowly survived by diving behind the bedroom screen just as the twister passed through their apartment.
Is he supposed to be grateful? Still in shock, Ohkawa says he doesn't know.
"It's a natural disaster. I don't know who to be angry at," he said.
CNN