YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--Shiro Kato looked for the name of his wife on a list of survivors posted at this fishing community's town hall on Monday but did not find it.
YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--Shiro Kato looked for the name of his wife on a list of survivors posted at this fishing community's town hall on Monday but did not find it.
Kato, 72, was working at a car maintenance factory near the coast when Friday's mega-earthquake hit.
He jumped in a car that he had been overhauling for a client but was submerged by the tsunami that smashed into Yamada shortly after the temblor struck.
As the water rushed into the vehicle, he wound down a window and managed to escape by grabbing part of a corrugated metal roof floating in the water.
The surging waters swept him 100 meters offshore, where he was eventually rescued by fishing boat.
At that point, his desperate search for his wife, Ryoko, began. She was working in the center of the town when the tsunami hit.
Kato has searched everywhere in what is left of the town. The dental clinic where she worked as a clerk has been completely destroyed.
"The last time I saw her was Friday morning, when I dropped her off on my way to work," he said. "I said to her, 'See you later.' She is a do-gooder, so she might have tried to hold somebody's hand to help and failed to escape. I just hope she made it."
The only sounds we could hear when we reached Yamada were the calls of seabirds and the groan of heavy machinery trying to move the debris. Palls of smoke still rose from its ruins.
Friday's magnitude-9.0 quake and the tsunami it triggered have turned this town of 19,000 people, previously best known for its oysters and beaches, into a wasteland.
A 10-meter-long part of the breakwater was smashed by the water, and a steel barrier designed to protect the town has been left crumpled, with a fishing boat tangled in its bent metal.
Most homes near the beach were swept away by the waves and many of the buildings that were not washed away have been burned to the ground. The town hall, about 400 meters from the coast, did not burn, but marks on its walls show that the water level in the building reached 2 meters at one point in the onslaught.
Norie Kikuchi, 50, and her 13-year-old daughter, Ema, were also searching the survivors list at the town hall, looking for Kikuchi's 24-year-old son, Yu.
He was working at a seafood processing company near the coast when the quake hit. He returned the short distance to home briefly after the first shocks, but then went back to his workplace to help his colleagues. He was seen being swallowed by the tsunami after helping other workers to evacuate.
"I just hope that he was not washed away far from the town," she said. "I want him to come back to me."
(This article was written by Atsushi Yamanishi and Yasunori Sakamoto.)