KAMAISHI, Iwate Prefecture--When the school building started to pitch and sway violently, Yuta Furusaki and his buddies knew exactly what to do.
KAMAISHI, Iwate Prefecture--When the school building started to pitch and sway violently, Yuta Furusaki and his buddies knew exactly what to do.
The 14-year-old junior high school baseball team player and his teammates had just started practice March 11 when the Great East Japan Earthquake hit. As soon as the rocking stopped, someone shouted: "First, let's get out of here!"
No sooner had boys rushed out into the open than they were joined by the rest of the students at Kamaishi-Higashi Junior High School, and they all headed to higher ground.
Next door, pupils at Unosumai Elementary School initially rushed to the third floor of the school building. But when they turned around and saw the older kids gathering in the schoolyard and preparing to flee, they, too, joined the pack of children heading for an elderly nursing facility on a hill about 1 kilometer away.
When the children saw the waves closing in from behind, they did not wait for instructions from the teachers: They kept going, trying to reach a safer elevation.
About 10 minutes later, both school buildings were engulfed by the tsunami that followed the magnitude-9.0 earthquake. The water quickly rose to the third-floor level.
"We grabbed the hands of elementary kids in the lower grades and an old woman nearby, and just kept running," Furusaki said.
After stopping briefly, they were sent running again, this time toward the mountains, after hearing a voice shout out a word they had heard many times before: "Tsunami!"
"We were always told to head for higher ground, and that is what we did," Furusaki said.
Thanks to repeated tsunami drills, all of the 212 junior high school students and 350 elementary school children on the site managed to escape the first wave of tsunami to hit Kamaishi, a city located on the jagged estuary coastline of Iwate Prefecture.
A similar situation played out in many other schools in the city, which knows only too well what devastation can be wrought by tsunami.
The city was pummeled in 1933 by the Showa Sanriku Tsunami and in 1960 by a massive tidal wave triggered by an earthquake off Chile.
Out of a total 2,924 elementary and junior high school children in Kamaishi, only five have been reported dead or missing in Japan's worst postwar disaster. Of the five, four had been absent or had left school early. One disappeared after being reunited with family following the dramatic escape from the tsunami.
"Thankfully the children fully understood the dangers of tsunami," said Toshihiko Sakashita, principal at Unosumai Elementary School.
Since 2004, school officials have staged numerous drills to teach the children what to do if a tsunami hits.
Toshitaka Katada, a professor at the graduate school of Gunma University who specializes in disaster social engineering, has served as an adviser for disaster and crisis management to the city since last year.
Katada penned a manual for teachers and has been instrumental in making sure that about 10 hours each year are devoted to disaster preparedness education.
Three key points that Katada taught the children are:
When an earthquake occurs, don't try to go home, but head for higher ground;
Don't place blind faith on prepared hazard maps but rather, evaluate the situation with your own eyes; and
Always assist others.
"We have succeeded in raising awareness among the children. The next step was to share that information with entire neighborhoods. Unfortunately, we were still halfway in achieving that when the tsunami hit," Katada said.
Katada remains optimistic about the future.
"As today's children grow up and become parents, it will be up to them to pass on their knowledge and experience to the next generation," he said.
(This article was written by Atsushi Yamanishi and Yasushi Okubo.)