As we approached the 18th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that took 6,434 lives, I met with some 50 bereaved family members. In the years since the Jan. 17, 1995 disaster, some had gone on to forge new lives with work and marriage, while others had experienced divorce and layoffs. But what they all had in common was concern and goodwill for the victims of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
The message, "You don't have to try so hard when everything is just too much," was one that I was asked to pass on to the victims of the triple disasters in the Tohoku region from many of the victims of the Hanshin earthquake. Through my reporting, I have become convinced that the many smiles that have returned to the 1995 quake survivors will bring a glimmer of hope to those suffering in Tohoku.
Hoping to help survivors of the 2011 disasters envision their futures, my colleagues and I worked on a series entitled, "18 nengo no watashi" (Me, 18 years later), tracking down survivors of the 1995 disaster who had appeared in the Mainichi Shimbun at the time, armed with copies of the original articles and photos. Here, I introduce two families whose stories made a deep impression on me but did not make it into the series.
One family appeared in the Osaka morning edition of Jan. 18, 1995, the day following the Hanshin earthquake. An article under the headline "Station vicinity burnt to the ground" described the devastation in Kobe's Nada Ward, accompanied by a photo of a dazed woman and her young son, wrapped in a comforter against the cold, near a collapsed apartment building. The photo had been taken the afternoon of the previous day, after the deaths of the woman's 7-year-old and 11-year-old sons had been confirmed.
Upon visiting the family at their new home that I'd located through information gathered on the grapevine, the woman's husband answered the door. He had been on his way to work when the quake took place at 5:46 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1995. Rushing home, he pulled his two older sons from under their collapsed building. His wife clung to the bodies of the boys, wrapped in blankets and laid on the ground, as she cried out their names.
Still, he said, the family didn't lose hope. "We decided we'd live our lives to the fullest for our two boys." Their surviving son, who was three at the time of the quake, became a dedicated judo wrestler in elementary and junior high school. Now 21, he's flung himself into his part-time job. The man's wife is also working a part-time job. "We're all doing well," he said with a smile.
An article published in the Jan. 26, 1995 morning edition, meanwhile, highlighted the birth of a new life in Nada Ward, which had seen many deaths. A photo showed a newborn baby with his mother, who was quoted saying that she wanted to give her son a name that would guide him to become "a strong boy who values life."
On my visit to her home in the Hyogo Prefecture city of Sanda, the woman looked at the article with nostalgia as she recounted the graphic details of the day of the quake. Because she had been at risk for premature delivery, she was scheduled for medical tests on Jan. 17, 1995. Bodies of the dead were carried in one after another as she waited for her doctor, who was busy tending to the injured. Running out of space, the bodies were laid out in the hallways with blankets covering just their faces and upper bodies. It was when the woman saw a mother throwing herself on the body of her dead son and calling his name repeatedly that she began to have contractions.
Her son, who was born in an environment not unlike a field hospital, was named Yuki, meaning "overflowing hope." I was unable to meet him because as a senior in high school, he was busy studying for college entrance exams. Still, I was moved by the hopes and dreams entrusted to him in his name and his mother's assurances that he was well.
On the night of Jan. 16 this year, the eve of 18th anniversary memorial services that were set to take place, survivors of both the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tohoku disasters came together at Higashiyuenchi Park in Kobe's Chuo Ward. Those who had been struck by the disasters in Tohoku said they felt encouraged by the stories of those who had made strides in the 18 years since their tragedy.
Hiroshi Matsuda, 52, who lived in Kobe's Nagata Ward at the time of the 1995 quake that killed his wife and daughter, told Mikiko Asanuma, 49, a resident of the Iwate Prefecture city of Rikuzentakata who lost her 25-year-old son to the 2011 tsunami, "Be patient. When it's too much, stand still."
Following the 1995 quake, Matsuda quit his job and at one point holed himself up in his temporary housing unit. It wasn't until two years ago that he was finally able to visit a memorial monument at the park in which the names of his wife and daughter have been engraved.
At Higashiyuenchi Park, the event participants arranged bamboo lanterns in the shape "3.11," and held a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m., the time when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred. In tears, Asanuma told the survivors of the Hanshin disaster, "I want to keep in step with you, and I hope that you will watch over us."
There are some things that only those who have experienced them can share. Hopefully there will come a day when Asanuma and other survivors of the Tohoku disasters will experience a recovery of the heart, with the recovery of the Hanshin survivors as their guiding "flames of hope." The survivors of the 1995 disaster always have the victims of the 2011 disasters in their thoughts.
Wednesday 6 February 2013
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20130206p2a00m0na010000c.html
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