RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--A crying Chihiro Kanno was encouraged by her friend Mami Sannomiya as they fled from the approaching tsunami on March 11.
RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--A crying Chihiro Kanno was encouraged by her friend Mami Sannomiya as they fled from the approaching tsunami on March 11.
"We can see each other again at school, Chihiro," Sannomiya told her as they hurried to the third floor of a community center, a designated emergency shelter. "Don't worry."
The moment they reached the third floor, the first-year students at Takata High School, both 16 and members of the school swimming club, were engulfed by the tsunami.
Kanno was holding her friend's right hand, but their hands were torn apart from each other as they were tossed up and down by the waves.
On that day, the two had eaten lunch together in a classroom--as they always did--and walked to an indoor pool along the coast for training.
The earthquake struck when they were taking a shower before entering the pool. Once the shaking stopped, they put on school uniforms over their wet swimsuits.
The nine members of the swimming club, divided into three vehicles, were taken to the community center.
Shocked by the powerful earthquake, Kanno kept crying, to be reassured by her friend over and over.
A city official told evacuees to go up to the second floor, saying a tsunami was coming. No sooner had Kanno set down her rucksack, when they were told to go to the third floor.
Once there, Kanno was swallowed by the tsunami, her body turning twice and striking a wall. She was underwater on the floor on her back, but she was not able to lift herself, as if something heavy was weighing her down.
She thought she might be dying. But her body floated to the surface when she thrashed her arms and legs. Her head then struck the ceiling, and she could breathe in a space 20 centimeters or so between the ceiling and the water surface.
Even though it was dark, she could hear the voices of several people. The water was not flowing anymore.
She fumbled for her cellphone she had put in the right pocket of her school uniform. A charm with her boyfriend's name on it and a sticker photo of her with her boyfriend were attached to the pink cellphone.
She grasped it, but the cellphone slipped through her hand and sank into the water.
"Where is the door?" she said. In the dark, a manager of the swimming club nicknamed Ho-chan, who was also a first-year student, responded, "Is that Chihiro?"
Kanno held Ho-chan's left hand. She also held the right hand of a woman, a stranger.
The water gradually receded, and it seemed that 15 minutes or so had passed.
Kanno's feet touched debris on the floor as the water lowered. Someone opened the door, and she found her cellphone and went out of the room.
Only 11 people in the room and another person in a small room were alive.
The survivors were not able to move about because the stairs and corridors were filled with debris.
They found corpses beneath their feet. Some gasped in surprise, and others held their breaths. But they had no choice but to sit on the mounds of bodies.
Kanno could not cry anymore.
The windows were all broken. The survivors, drenched to the skin, were exposed to the cold wind and snow.
Kanno had lost her shoes and could not feel her swollen feet. She was holding Ho-chan's right hand, and that was the only warmth she could feel.
She found a candy drop in the right pocket of her school uniform. Sannomiya had given it to her just before they had headed to the third floor of the community center. "Please eat this if something happens," Sannomiya had told her.
One of the survivors died in the early morning of March 12. The remaining 11 were rescued by a helicopter. Sannomiya was not among the survivors.
On April 3, Kanno, accompanied by her mother, Yuri, visited the community center for the first time after her ordeal.
She looked for her rucksack for nearly an hour, to no avail. Inside was her purse containing a sticker photo that she had taken with Sannomiya and other friends the day before the earthquake.
"We were all training for the Tohoku swimming competition. Many members are not here, but I want to take part in the event," Kanno said, holding her broken cellphone that cannot be switched on anymore.
Other than Kanno and Ho-chan, the swimming club now has only two members, who did not take part in the training on that day.
The community center was one of the 68 facilities the city government had designated as emergency shelters where residents were advised to seek refuge.
Of those, 36 were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
In the Takata district, eight of the 11 emergency shelters were submerged, including the community center and the gymnasium, which was about 400 meters east of the center.
Hideharu Sasaki, 38, a city government employee, was in a parking lot of the gymnasium when the earthquake struck.
In front of the gym, he found about 80 residents and city officials who had come out of the gym. Many more residents were arriving to evacuate.
He found a battery and put it in a radio in the gym office and turned it on. He heard reports about a 6-meter-high tsunami.
Sasaki guided residents, including some on wheelchairs, to the second floor of the gym, lifting elderly citizens who were on unsteady legs.
Through the windows, he could see houses swept away in muddy streams.
He thought there would be heavy damage, but he remained calm. He remembered he was told that the second floor would be safe.
He saw a volunteer firefighter, who was directing evacuees, caught by the waves.
Immediately afterward, water broke the windows and poured into the gym.
Tossed about, Sasaki struggled to come to the surface. His hand touched a steel bar just before he ran out of breath.
When he held onto the bar, his face rose above the water. There was less than 30 centimeters between the ceiling and the water.
The water level kept rising, and he thought the end of his life must be near.
As he managed to continue breathing, the water began to subside. He groped his way in the dark and came to a door. Under the light, he found that he had been pushed into an attic.
He jumped 3 to 4 meters down to the second floor. He found piles of bodies all over. Aside from Sasaki, only two persons survived in the gym.
The clock on the wall, which was about 15 meters high, was stopped at 3:30 p.m.
In February 2010, a tsunami warning had been issued for the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region following an earthquake in Chile.
There were no casualties in Rikuzentakata, but some citizens raised concerns about the safety of the gym, which was situated at about sea level.
The gym was designated as the site where the district disaster headquarters would be set up in case of a natural disaster.
While city employees said they prepared a document on the issue and submitted it to officials in charge, the city did not act on it. Tragically, many people had thought that even if the city was flooded, the water would not reach the second or third floor of the gym.