Remembering March 11
March 11, 2001, is an unforgettable day for many of us. For the last few days, news has been broadcasting the shocking image of the Tsunami and the rubble of Tohoku, and it is still too much for me to bear the pain of eight years ago, so I switched the channel. Am I running away from the cruel fact of the past, pretending to be blind? It is the contrary. I don’t need the news to recall those images of the past and remind me of how tragic the incident was. It has never left me, and I think it never will.
I was 27 when it happened. I was working at a 24-hour English daycare in Ginza. It wasn’t a big school, probably a maximum of about 20 children during the day, so it was always hectic.
As the head teacher of the school, I was 27 years old, bilingual, and had been teaching for 2 years. I worked day and night, in the school, on the train, and at home. Then came the day.
It was nap time, and teachers were having lunch in the playroom with a few children who were too old to take a nap, while some children waited for their parents to pick them up. The rest of the children were taking a nap in the sleeping room. Then it started to shake. The staff were excellent. A few of them gathered the children in the middle of the playroom, where nothing would fall on them. One of them ran to the door to secure the exit for evacuation, turned off the light, and grabbed the disaster hoods for the children. I ran into the nap room to be with the children who were sleeping. The nap room wasn’t secured enough. I threw myself on top of the children, in case anything would fall, it wouldn’t hit them. I think we had about 15 children sleeping. I knew I couldn’t protect all of them by myself, so I shouted to the playroom asking for someone to come and help me. Fortunately, the partition was only a curtain and not a thick wall; one of the teachers came running in and threw herself on top of the children as well.
It felt like the shake went on forever. I said to the other teacher lying next to me, “It’s been shaking for quite a long time.” Then I realized my voice was trembling, and I also noticed that my hands were shaking with fear. The building was making a squeaking sound. I heard children crying in the playroom.
What felt like forever had finally stopped. We quickly woke the children with help from other teachers, gathered them in the middle of the playroom, put their shoes and disaster hoods on, and packed all their jackets into a bag while a few teachers went downstairs to prepare the trolley for evacuation.
One of the parents who owns a restaurant in the neighborhood came to school and saw us preparing to evacuate to the closest elementary school. She told us to wait to evacuate since the glass from the office buildings could break and rain on us. She was right. We were in the middle of Ginza, and there were skyscrapers everywhere. However, our building was old, and I didn’t trust its resistance if a bigger shake hit us. After a while, we decided to go to the elementary school. We brought a futon mattress with us so we could cover the children in the trolley in case another big shake hit us.
When we arrived at the school, we saw people gathering around the elementary school gate. We asked if they could open the gate and let all of us in. They looked puzzled, but they were kind enough to let us in, as the children accompanied us. When we started crossing the gate, another big shake hit. Glass windows were shaking, so we prepared our futon to cover the children. I heard screams behind me, and I looked back. One of the teachers or staff of the elementary school shouted, “Just open the gate! Let them in!!!” Some of the people in suits ran inside with us, and I wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe this was real. It was like watching a very realistic panic movie, but it wasn’t. This was real.
We evacuated and stayed in the schoolyard for a while. Some parents came to pick up the children. After a while, the elementary school offered us the opportunity to go inside and use one of the vacant classrooms. They even played the DVD for us so that the children would not be bored. Teachers sang songs, read books, while parents came to pick them up one by one. Most of the children were okay, but a few of the sensitive children burst into tears once they saw their parents. We stayed there for hours, unsure of what to do and when to return to our school. By 6 o’clock, we decided to go back to school and wait for the rest of the parents to come and pick up.
Most of the teachers stayed at school overnight. All modes of transportation were halted, and we couldn’t go anywhere. One of the children’s mothers couldn’t come and pick him up, as she had just given birth to his little brother. His father worked a bit far from school, so it took him all night to walk to school to pick up his son. One teacher who rode our school van to drop a child off at Kachidoki came back 12 hours after she left the school due to traffic. We were lucky to be in daycare, since we had mats and blankets to sleep on, and some extra food in the fridge for all of us to share. Convenience stores were empty, but one of the parents brought us some rice balls and fried chicken.
Once we turned on the TV, we froze. Horrible scenes were showing on the screen one after another. We didn’t want the children to see the news, but we needed a source of information. The alarm for aftershocks continued throughout the night as well. Staff were dozing off, but I couldn’t sleep at all. As the head teacher of the school, I was responsible for all the students. At eight o’clock the next morning, the last child was picked up by his father and went home. Trains were moving again. We all packed away and left the school. Ginza wasn’t so different from usual—no broken glasses, just a little bit quieter than usual. I didn’t feel like going home and being alone in my small one-room apartment, so I decided to go to my sister’s place in Shibuya. Once I saw her face after the door opened, without my expectation, I suddenly burst into tears and wept like a small girl. I was relieved that every single child and staff member got to go home safely.
The following summer, I was blessed with the chance to volunteer in Minami Sanriku to help clear the rubble from the farm fields, allowing people to resume farming and get back to their lives. I was expecting to pick up stones, rocks, and sticks, but I kept finding pieces of broken plates, toys, faded family portraits, bricks, and many other personal items, along with massive tree trunks and fences. Every piece of broken glass and toy felt so heavy. I could feel the weight of people’s lives that were lost, maybe forever. It was a hot day, but I couldn’t stop picking up, and didn’t want to stop either. The day passed quickly, and I was exhausted and devastated, but I was glad I had been able to do this. Unfortunately, this was the only time I had the opportunity to visit Tohoku.
I wasn’t the victim of 3.11. All my family and friends are safe, and my home is still here. I barely experienced it. Yet part of me still carries the pain. Try to imagine the pain Tohoku still carries. 2533 are still missing, 3418 are still living in temporary dwellings, 50,000 are still evacuated, over 330,000 square meters of polluted soil from radiation that hasn’t been cleansed is left in Tohoku. It may seem like Tohoku is improving, but the reality is that the region is still a stricken area, and people living there still carry the unbearable pain beneath their gentle smiles. Tohoku still needs our continued action as well as our prayers.
