March 11, 2011: A Date I Will Never Forget
By: Harumi Naito
My mom and I were watching T.V. one night. I don’t even remember what we were watching, only that we were laughing uncontrollably.
A light turned on in the hall, illuminating the living room. My dad walked in, “I need to talk to you guys…” Mom and I perked up from our relaxed positions and I immediately turned the volume down.
After a long pause, “There’s been a big earthquake in Japan. It’s very bad.” Mom and I exchanged wide eyed looks as he apologized for interrupting our show and left to the back room. In case you don’t know, Japan is known for having huge earthquakes. In fact, people tend to nail their furniture to the wall, so they won’t get crushed by it when an earthquake occurs.
We tried not to dwell on it too much as earthquakes are frequent.
Next day
My best friend checked on me to see if I was doing okay. I shrugged. I was fine. It was just an earthquake, right?
“You don’t know? The earthquake was 9.1!” Her news was scary, mainly because I didn’t understand how severe a 9.1 could be.
When I returned home, everything was dark. I walked to the backroom, where I found my dad sitting in front of images of waves sweeping homes away and mangled telephone poles, semi-trucks, and ships. He pointed to an image. “That’s my hometown.” I sat down beside him and we watched horrifying news coverage for the rest of the night. 3/11/2011, the day a tsunami destroyed half of my father’s hometown, a fisherman town in Northern Japan.
Aftermath
Our home became a very dark place. No longer a space of comfort or a break away from school. Because the telephone wires were down, we had no way of contacting my grandparents. Were they hurt? Were they alive? And here we were, over 5,000 miles away. I will never forget the helplessness and hopelessness we felt. My dad stopped sleeping and eating. He was essentially gone. I knew how much this hurt my parents and I felt like I had to be strong for them. I didn’t want to cry in front of them because that would make them cry. So I would quietly excuse myself, go into my room, and sob. Everything else that existed outside of this situation became small and insignificant.
The Miracle
Everyday my dad would attempt to call my grandparents, but with very little success. Nevertheless, his resilience remained. One day, he picked up the phone and just as he was about to dial, he heard a little voice on the other end, calling his name. It was my grandma! She was okay. My grandma was able to call us from an emergency satellite phone. We rejoiced, cried tears of joy, danced, sang… My grandparents were lucky to have a home in the hills, but others were not so lucky. We reminded ourselves of this and put black bands on our arms to represent our grief.
One Year Later
A year later, we visited my dad’s town and were able to see the effects of the tsunami. As we drove to our favorite rocky beach, we passed by pipes that stuck out of the ground where homes once stood, an abandoned gas station with metal debris everywhere, closed businesses…
The building at the beachfront, where I used to get vanilla soft cream looked decrepit. Rather than skipping rocks into the water and counting each skip, I sat down and held the rocks in my hands. Despair, loss, and pain washed over me. I could feel the destruction. Even after a year, everything had changed.
I learned a lot during this experience. How fragile humans are, how little power we have to control the circumstances around us, what it’s like to be completely helpless, and how frustrating it is to not know if things will be okay. Maybe we made it out, but there were still people living in temporary homes, people who disappeared, people who were announced dead. It’s taken me years to come to terms with my grief, but in those years, Japan has been able to survive this painful event. My family and I were powerless. But perhaps it’s enough that we survived this.
Check out Harumi’s amazing website and blog!
