IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--Few people here took seriously the constant warnings of Tokuo Suzuki.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--Few people here took seriously the constant warnings of Tokuo Suzuki.
The 75-year-old community leader of the Tairatoyoma district had long insisted that the Shioyasaki coast of Iwaki was vulnerable to tsunami. He created an evacuation manual on his home computer and distributed it to neighbors. He even organized the district's first-ever evacuation drill scheduled for autumn.
However, most residents brushed aside Suzuki's concerns. They simply doubted that a large tsunami would really strike the coast.
Even after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake rocked the area, some still ignored Suzuki's frantic calls for people to flee to higher ground.
The Shioyasaki coast is more known for scenic spots where shoals spread out from the foot of a lighthouse. It was a quiet area with a few lodgings and popular among swimmers and surfers.
Unlike the ria coast of many narrow bays further north, the smoother Shioyasaki coast had not been struck by a major tsunami in decades. The last recorded fatalities from a tsunami in the area occurred during the Edo Period (1603-1867).
On the afternoon of March 11, a police officer stopped by Suzuki's home for a chat. They were drinking coffee in the living room when Suzuki received a phone call from a city government official.
Suzuki told the official, "We are planning a tsunami exercise, so I want to ask for the cooperation of the city government office."
Then the ground started shaking.
"This is really a big one, isn't it?" the official said.
"You're right," Suzuki replied and hung up.
As roof tiles began falling onto the yard and a vase tumbled from a shelf, Suzuki realized that this was not an ordinary earthquake.
The police officer got in his car and sped off.
Suzuki followed him out of the house, forgetting to wear a jacket, and saw a neighbor driving a firefighting vehicle.
"Do you have a mike?" Suzuki asked.
"Yes, you can use it," the volunteer firefighter replied.
Suzuki jumped into the passenger seat.
Traveling between 30 and 40 kph, the vehicle wound through the streets from near the coastline to where the hills became steeper.
The radio in the vehicle repeatedly announced that a tsunami warning had been issued. But the quake had cut off the disaster prevention public broadcast system, so Suzuki, who once worked as a radio operator on a salmon and trout fishing boat, decided to spread the word.
Cutting off the siren, Suzuki urged residents to evacuate their homes.
The volunteer firefighter kept an eye on the waves at the levee. He also saw residents picking up concrete blocks that had fallen during the quake.
Alarmed by their passiveness, Suzuki changed his tone. Instead of urging residents to evacuate, he ordered them to flee.
Among the residents who had believed that a large tsunami would never strike the area was a 50-year-old woman whose only daughter is in elementary school. The woman was more concerned about damage from the earthquake than the information about the approaching tsunami.
She drove up a road to the mountains away from the ocean, but stopped about a minute or two from her home when she saw an elderly woman driver she knew.
While they were chatting by the roadside, they heard an unfamiliar rumbling sound that gradually became louder.
"Is that a cargo train? Is there a rail line around here?" the woman said.
She then saw the debris-ridden water rising to the height of a house roof.
The elderly woman cried out, "It's a tsunami."
Suzuki's prediction had come true. The two women jumped into their cars and drove to safety.
Toshikazu Suzuki, 71, once a chief engineer on a saury fishing boat, was standing in front of his home and holding his wife, Akiko, 69, who could not stop trembling after the magnitude-9 earthquake.
He heard Tokuo Suzuki ordering people to evacuate as the firefighting vehicle turned around near the lighthouse.
But Toshikazu was more concerned about closing the sluice by the irrigation ditch near his home. He was in charge of the sluice until the end of March.
He told Akiko to remain at the house.
With his back to the ocean, Toshikazu began to manually close the 2-meter-high sluice when the water crashed down on him.
He clung to some bars but was forced to move to a utility pole when another wave hit. In his struggle for survival, he noticed that all the homes around him had disappeared.
In the Tairatoyoma district, 82 people died or are still missing from the disaster.
The tsunami pushed the squeaking sand from the beach onto the streets of Iwaki. Survivors still walk over that sand in search of memorabilia.
Toshikazu survived the tsunami with bruised ribs. But his wife did not make it. When her body was found, the wristwatch he bought for her last November before their trip to Kyoto was still working.
In early April, after cremating his wife, Toshikazu stopped by a temporary prefabricated building being used by neighborhood officials.
"It's too late now. If only the two of us had evacuated," Toshikazu said.
With his eyes closed, Tokuo listened quietly.
Police have routinely asked Tokuo to help identify bodies. Although he thought he knew all of his neighbors, he has only been able to confirm the identities of a few.
Local residents now tell Tokuo, "You were always warning us about a tsunami."
But Tokuo admits he never imagined such huge waves.
They also say they will never forget the tsunami that destroyed so many lives.
Tokuo tells them he hopes the memory of the disaster will be passed on for many generations in the district.
(This article was written by Noriyuki Kaneta, Tsuyoshi Shimoji and Yoshinobu Motegi.)