High and dry

HERE ARE two stories about the tsunami that appeared in the Iwate Nippo, a local newspaper in the Tohoku region. Their local perspective brings the events of that day into clearer focus.

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The waves of the tsunami climbed to just a few meters below the house of 101-year-old Ito Ayano in Hirota-cho, Rikuzentakata, but the entire 24-household community was spared.

Her grandson Takuya, however, who worked in the city’s agricultural and forestry division, drowned in the tsunami when he was leading people to a designated evacuation center at the local gym.

Takuya’s father Kazuo (72), her oldest son, said, “My son died, fulfilling his duty as a city employee to the end. That’s the way it goes…but how much it must have bothered him to leave behind his three children…”

There was another large tsunami in March 1933, when Ayano was 23. She clutched her two-year-old daughter as they were swallowed up in the waves, and they survived only because they were washed up on high ground. Meanwhile, her house near the coast was crushed and five family members died, including her husband and another son.

Fifteen people from the community died, so the survivors decided to move up the hill. That saved them in 1960 when the tsunami from the Chile earthquake struck. It washed away part of the town, but nothing compared to what happened this time.

Said Kazuo, “Takata-cho (a different neighborhood) was not as vigilant as it could have been. It hasn’t been easy living up there and climbing that hill after coming back from a day of fishing, but we all survived. It shows that living in a high place is the only way to protect ourselves from tsunami.”

The city must rebuild after being turned into a mountain of rubble. Tetsuko (70), the dead man’s mother said, “No matter how well we build a breakwater, it’ll be breached sometime. I hope this time, the people who survived build the town in a high place where the waves can’t reach. It might also help relieve the sorrow I feel about my son.”

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The quick wit of the teachers at Kesen Primary School in Rikuzentakata after the earthquake allowed all 92 of their students to escape the tsunami.

When the violent shaking struck their classroom on the afternoon of 11 March, the children followed their training and took cover under their desks. Then, still wearing their indoor shoes, they formed lines out in the schoolyard. The school is about two kilometers from the coast and is one of the designated shelters in the area. People from the neighborhood also arrived, and the evacuation seemed to have ended safely.

The teachers were calling the roll when they heard something from a radio for disaster use. It usually can’t be heard unless the surroundings are quiet. It was a warning that the tsunami had breached the breakwater. The school was just 500 meters away.

Realizing the urgency of the situation, the teachers immediately led the students to a hill behind the school. There is a dense bamboo grove on the hillside, so they had the high school students with stronger bodies go first and create a trail for the younger children to follow.

The children didn’t realize what was happening, but the teachers followed them, continually shouting, “Don’t turn around,” and “Keep climbing”. Said one fifth-grader, “It was frightening, but the teacher said, ‘It’s all right,’ and pushed my back. He made me feel safe.”

About one minute after they reached the higher ground about 12 meters away from the school, there was a loud roar, and what one teacher described as “a wall of brown water” appeared. The three-story school was swallowed up.

The teachers spent several days in the shelters looking after the children, without returning to their own destroyed homes. Said 6th grade teacher Sugano Kazutaka, “Well, we just acted without thinking. It was really a good thing that the children were saved.”

Principal Sugano Shoichiro retired at the end of the school year (about two weeks later). He said, “If we hadn’t gotten word in time, we’d have been done for. Both the teachers and the students worked well.”

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Reader Jeffrey sends in this link to a slideshow on an Al-Jazeera blog. It puts some pictures to the words of the first story. I hope the mayor’s comment at the end is premature.

A quick glance at the comments might also be educational. There aren’t many.