MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture--Dramatic images have emerged from the massive tsunami of March 11 from a town official who evacuated to the rooftop of a three-story building and kept taking photos until the wall of water engulfed him.
MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture--Dramatic images have emerged from the massive tsunami of March 11 from a town official who evacuated to the rooftop of a three-story building and kept taking photos until the wall of water engulfed him.
Nobuo Kato, 39, a public relations official in the town of Minami-Sanriku, was swept away immediately after the tsunami swept over the roof.
Kato's camera did not survive to shoot another photo. Fortunately, Kato did, and his camera's memory card lived to tell the story of those terrifying moments.
On March 11, Kato, who was in charge of public relations for the town's planning division, grabbed a camera immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. and started taking photos inside his office, where shelves fell and papers were scattered.
As he went outside the town office, he heard someone calling from the 13-meter disaster management building next door, "Come up here now! The tsunami is coming!" He dashed up the stairs.
As soon as he reached the roof, he saw the tsunami approaching the building, raising a yellowish cloud of waves. He saw the surging waves approaching, swallowing houses and vehicles.
"Strangely enough, I did not feel scared, perhaps because I kept staring through the viewfinder," Kato recalled in an interview.
The tsunami grew higher and higher.
When the surging waves were about to reach the roof, someone yelled, "Here it comes! Find something to hold on to!"
Kato, who had kept pressing the shutter, hastily looked around but could not find any place to grab.
The moment he felt his feet swept up by the dark wave, he reflexively pushed his camera inside his clothes.
"Even if I would die, I would leave what I recorded here," he thought.
He was swept away.
But when his head was lifted from the waves he heard someone shout, "Grab my arm!"
It was Kenji Endo, the town's deputy mayor.
Kato instantly grabbed Endo's arm, but he found his body submerged again.
He could not breathe for a few minutes.
"Jesus! I don't want to die," he thought to himself repeatedly before he lost consciousness.
When the water receded and he regained consciousness, he had been carried more than 10 meters, the length of the roof. He realized Endo, who was holding on to the railing with one hand, was holding him with the other.
"I cannot thank him enough," Kato said.
When the tsunami struck, there were 30 people on the roof, but only 11 survived.
Kato's digital single-lens reflex camera was no longer usable, but miraculously, the images survived.
"I want to hang in here with other Minami-Sanriku people who survived the disaster," Kato said.