KOBE--At 5:46 a.m. on Jan. 17, Toshinori Fujita and his wife, Hidemi, prayed for the victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that struck at that moment 17 years ago, but their grief also included their daughter, who lost her life in the March 11 disaster.
KOBE--At 5:46 a.m. on Jan. 17, Toshinori Fujita and his wife, Hidemi, prayed for the victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that struck at that moment 17 years ago, but their grief also included their daughter, who lost her life in the March 11 disaster.
Tomo, then 13, survived the Kobe temblor, but was killed in the Great East Japan Earthquake last year. Tomo, 29, was three months pregnant.
At the memorial in Kobe, Toshinori, 63, and Hidemi, 58, talked to Tomo.
“We have been to eastern Japan to assist the victims,” the couple said. “Rest in peace in heaven with your baby.”
On March 11, Tomo, who was working in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, was swept away by the tsunami unleashed by the magnitude-9.0 temblor. Her body was cremated in the prefecture in April.
She had become a caseworker employed by the Rikuzentakata municipal government after she married a man from the city she had met while they were attending a university in Aichi Prefecture.
In autumn 2009, she began working as a counselor for the care of the elderly with dementia and other impairments.
For a woman who had grown up in western Japan, it was a huge challenge for Tomo to understand the local dialect.
Barely comprehending what senior citizens were saying, she initially had to be accompanied by a city employee who served as her “interpreter” when she started her job.
Her colleagues recalled they were impressed by her dedication because she went to great lengths to become familiar with the local dialect and customs, buying cards written in the local language and making other efforts.
They also said she appeared jubilant when she showed them her maternity health record book about a month before the disaster.
On March 11, Tomo was in a car when the quake struck.
She returned to the municipal office and, hearing the warning for an imminent tsunami, fled to a public hall on the seaside next to the city government building.
She went up to the third floor, but the entire structure was engulfed by the 15-meter-high tsunami.
Eleven people were rescued from the building the following day. But Tomo was not among them.
Her body was discovered offshore on March 28.
When the Great Hanshin Earthquake had struck, Tomo was a first-year junior high school student.
Her family's three-story home in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, was shaken violently and tilted.
Although a piano and chests of drawers were toppled, no one in the family was hurt.
The Great Hanshin Earthquake killed 6,434 people and injured thousands in Kobe, Awajishima island and surrounding areas.
It was the most devastating quake that jolted Japan in postwar years before the country was hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Hidemi, then an employee of the municipal government of Ashiya, a neighboring city, went to the rescue at evacuation centers, delivering relief aid, while Tomo took care of the household.
Toshinori, who ran an art gallery in Nishinomiya, began working as a volunteer for children to help them overcome their traumatic experiences in the quake through drawing pictures.
Just as he did then, Toshinori volunteered to work with afflicted children in Iwate Prefecture following last year's quake. He wanted to return the kindness extended to his daughter there.
Hidemi struggled to come to terms with the fact that Tomo was gone. But she was comforted by the Japanese translation of “If I Knew,” a poem written by an American woman named Norma Cornett Marek.
Written in tribute to the author's lost child, the poem was recited in numerous gatherings and TV programs memorializing the victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.
Tomo’s 27-year-old sister checked out the book "If I Knew" from a library in October. The poem touched the couple's heartstrings.
One passage goes:
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance you get to hold your loved one tight.
In November, the couple bought 110 copies to give to bereaved families of Rikuzentakata city employees.
Tomo’s co-workers told Hidemi something unexpected at the memorial service held on Nov. 19 for some 100 city employees who perished in the disaster, including Tomo.
They told her Tomo read the same poem in front of audiences in a lecture meeting about welfare held in the city in February 2010. In the meeting, Tomo was suddenly asked to recite “If I Knew.”
But she was poised and finished reading it serenely.
“She read the poem fluently,” one of her colleagues recalled. “Her voice touched our heart.”
The story had Hidemi feeling as if Tomo was saying that she will be always with her mother.
Another passage of the poem goes:
So hold your loved ones close today, and whisper in their ear,
Tell them how much you love them and that you’ll always hold them dear.
(This article was written by Naoyuki Mori and Setsuko Tachikawa.)