My Parents are Alive（生きていた両親）

A few days later, I received an email from the neighbor of my home in Kamaishi.  She was in another city when the earthquake occurred, and came back to her home.  She wrote, “Your mother and father are safe.   I got words from them, “We are alive and fine.  Don’t worry.” Your mother is managing everything well in the situation with no electricity and water.    Since we lack of gasoline, our neighbors share a car and go to a supermarket to buy foods.  As your mother said, I think helping each other is really important.”

I was really relieved then.  It was almost a week after the earthquake.   Until then, so many people helped and encouraged me: classmates, my host family in the previous house, friends, and colleagues of my previous workplace…  I really appreciate them for sharing the pain and showing the sympathy.

Some more days later, the cell phone system restarted to work in my hometown, and I finally could reach my parents.  It was 2 weeks after the earthquake.  When the earthquake occurred, my father was in the hospital which is about 12km away from my home.  He drove back home then, and the tsunami came when he reached there.  He said he could see the wave coming to the coast at the balcony of the house.  My mother was in the bank in the downtown, and was waiting for a bus at the bus stop.  Then she heard the warning of tsunami.  When she looked back, she saw the debris with cars and other things were approaching her.  Then she ran away toward the inland and climbed up the hill with other evacuees.  She said the tsunami was still coming even when she was running up the hill.  It was 30 minutes after the earthquake.

Unfortunately, over 700 citizens died and another over 600 citizens are still missing in Kamaishi.  Overall in the north-eastern Japan, more than 12,000 people are confirmed to be dead and over 15,000 people are still missing.  Missing people are probably under the debris and under the sea at this moment.  I think the sadness that their family and friends have are far beyond my imagination.  I do hope people are missing to be found as soon as possible.

それから2，3日後、近所のある方からメールをいただきました。彼女は地震の起きた際、たまたま県内内陸部の他都市にいらっしゃったそうで、数日後ご自宅に戻られたそうです。メールにはこのように書かれていました。「お父さん・お母さんともに無事です。伝言も受けています。「生きてっから、心配すんな」と。お母さんは水や電気のないこの状況でもいろいろとうまく工夫されています。ガソリンが不足しているので、近所の方々で車に相乗りし、街のスーパーに買出しに行っているそうです。お母さんが仰るように、本当に助け合いが大切だなと思います。」

このメールを読んで安心しました。ちょうど地震から一週間がたっていました。それまでに、クラスメート、ホストファミリー、友人、前職の同僚など本当に多くの方々が痛みを共有し、また助けられ、励まされたことに心から感謝しています。

それから数日後、ようやく釜石の自宅のあるエリアでも携帯電話が復旧し、両親と話すことができました。地震から2週間後のことでした。父は、地震の起きた際、自宅から12km離れた病院にいたそうです。その後、車を運転して自宅に戻り、到着してすぐに津波が来たとのことでした。波が海岸に迫るのが、自宅2階のベランダから見えたそうです。母は、市街地の銀行にいました。その後バス停にいたところ、避難サイレンが鳴り、後ろを振り返ったときにはすでに車などを巻き込みながら津波が近づいてきていたとのことでした。母は他の避難者の方々と内陸の方面に逃げ、丘を駆け上がり、助かりました。地震から30分後のことでした。

残念ながら、釜石市では600人以上の方々がお亡くなりになり、また600名以上の方々が今も行方不明です。東北地方では死亡者は1万2000名を超え、行方不明者は1万5,000名にも上っています。行方不明者の方々は、今もがれきの下や、海の中にいらっしゃるのかもしれません。亡くなった方や行方不明者の方々の悲しみは、想像をはるかに超えるものだと思います。どうか、一日も早く行方不明者の方々が見つかることを願ってやみません。

To Find Whether My Family is Safe

On 13 and 14 March, 2011 -.

What people want to know best is whether their family are safe when natural disasters occur.  Phone did not work next day neither, so many people were using Twitter, social networking services, google person finders to get information of their family.  Most of the time, I was checking information on Twitter and share them with my friends and people from my hometown.  I thought information is the most vital.  Even if they are small pieces of information, when many of them are accumulated, they will be useful to capture what happened in my hometown as a whole.

I registered my parents name on Google Person Finder, and sent an email to a local radio station so that they would read aloud the name of my parents.  They were reading aloud all messages from listeners for 24 hours.  I understood how a local radio was important because listeners may have a portable radio though they cannot watch tv, and they tell us very detailed information such as who are looking for whom, which roads are available, and which shelter does not have enough foods, etc...  Besides, the national broadcasting and large private tv stations could not work on these and were not very helpful to grasp the local condition.  I also wrote how my classmates in Lund were worrying about them.  I knew there was no electricity and my parents might not be listening to the radio, but I wanted to do try everything I could do.  So did many people, I guess.

One of the most important information were satellite and aerial photos of my hometown.  You can see which areas were devastated by the tsunami from the photos.  The coastal areas were mostly destroyed as you can see in the aerial photos.

Centre of Kamaishi

North of Kamaishi

Rikuzen Takata

I got to know the houses near by the coast in my home area were washed out.  The tsunami came to the train station, but it seemed it did not go further.  The tsunami did not reach my home because its altitude is a little high though it is just about 1.2 km away from the coast.  I got to know my home seemed safe.  But I could not know where were my parents when the earthquake occurred.  If they were in the downtown...such a negative imagination comes out many times.

According to the news and information on Twitter, there were many people evacuated from the tsunami and they were in a public shelter, but they really lacked of foods and water.  It was very cold for them because the temperature was below 0 and it was snowing.  What made it worse was there was no electricity and oil, so the condition in the shelters.  Each public shelter made lists of evacuees, and the prefecture police office collects them and showed them online.  These are quite important information source for us.

Later, I found there was my mother's name on the list.  She seemed to be in the city court in the downtown of Kamaishi.  But I was wondering where my father was.  Why they are not together...?

(Written by Take, Lund University)

My Hometown Was Devastated

11th March, 2011-.

Japan is a country which often experiences earthquakes.  Perhaps most of us are quite used to small shakes.  There was a news about a big earthquake occurred in north-eastern Japan on 9th March and a little height tsunamis came to the coastal cities.  I did not worry about it at all because the damage was quite small.

I went to the lecture around at 9:00 AM and met my teacher when I opened the door.  This day was one of the most important day for me since our group was going to give a presentation of a project.    I said him "good morning" and he responded me,

"Did you hear the news about the earthquake?"

I thought it was about the earthquake occurred 2 days ago, but it was not.  He said, "today" and "400 km northern from Tokyo."  I immediately opened the news web page and found the name of my hometown "Kamaishi" and "4.2 m tsunami (later I got to know it was over 10m)."  Another article said, "magnitude 8.9."  I was really shocked because I knew how tsunami at this height was powerful and destructive, and thought of safety of my parents soon.  I made a phone call to my father, but it did not work.  "The phone lines are full", I thought.  All of my classmates became quiet when they heard the conversation between the teacher and me, and someone said, "Japan is prepared for this kind of natural disasters, so they will manage well."  But I knew this was the different.  I could not be optimistic at all and got a little panic , and went to another room to be alone and calm down.

I called and sent emails to my parents many times, but I could not make it.  The more I reloaded the web page, the more bad news came.  It was easy to guess so many people were already washed out.  Later, the international news was showing the video of my hometown.  The massive tsunami was washingout ships and cars, and roads were disappeared.  On another video, the buildings in the downtown of Kamaishi was being destroyed by tsunami, and collapsed houses were spreading out dust into the sky.  The sky was becoming gray and gray with the dust.  I could not believe it.  Is this my hometown where I grew up for 18 years?  Is this the city I walked just 2 months ago?  Yes, my hometown was being devastated.

After going back home, I checked different types of news to know what happened in my home region Tohoku (North East) Region, and tried to contact with my family.  The media broad-casted overall information such as height of tsunami, which cities got damaged, how many people were missing...  But there was no detailed information about my hometown such as which areas were destroyed, where did people evacuated, etc...  Later, I got to know the reasons were simple: the cell phone tower was collapsed, fixed phones were not available, the internet in local areas was not available.  From the news, I got to know many coastal cities in north-eastern Japan had severely damaged by the tsunamis.  Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture had oil spilled, which made huge fires in the downtown.  Minami Soma had the large crop fields were covered with dark colored sea water and huge debris.  Many coastal cities experienced over 10 m tsunami, and a lot of lives were immediately taken.  It was too early that tsunami came after the earthquake, only 30-60 mins after the earthquake.  Many people tried to run away from the tsunamis, but the time was not enough.

I really worried about my parents, relatives, and friends.  Eventually I had been watching news until 6 a.m. on the next day.  But there was little useful information.

(Written by Take, Lund University)