RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--"I want to cry, it’s just that I don't know how best to cry. Tears just don't come naturally to me."
RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--"I want to cry, it’s just that I don't know how best to cry. Tears just don't come naturally to me."
Those are the words of Yukihisa Ojima, a 40-year-old owner of an electric appliance shop in this northeastern city devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Ojima lost his wife, Noriko, 38, and daughter, Chihiro, 7, in the disaster. He now lives alone in a prefabricated temporary housing complex.
Immediately after the magnitude-9 earthquake struck on the afternoon of March 11, Ojima, a volunteer firefighter, returned home from work and went out on lookout duty as the city was in a full blackout. At the time, he never imagined a tsunami would soon strike.
After it did, he could not be reunited with his family while he was helping transport dead bodies covered in mud. Six days later, the bodies of his wife and child were found near his home.
"Chii-chan, Chii-chan!" He kept calling the name of his daughter until his colleagues finally told him, "It's time."
On the second floor of his damaged house, he found a memo pad in Chihiro's backpack where she had jotted down some of her belongings. "Pe-to-bo-to-ro" (plastic bottle), "no-o-to" (notebook) and "ta-o-ru" (towel). Her spelling was a little awkward as she had only just learned how to write hiragana.
"It's really hard to look at this,” said her father. “She must have had so much to live for. I'm so upset by this.
"I would think about her as much as I could if only thinking about her could bring her back to life, but that's not the case. I'm not saying I will forget about it all, but I would rather take a step forward."
In mid-June, Ojima reopened his electric appliance shop in a temporary space. He takes a keepsake of Chihiro, a flower-patterned backpack with a Hello Kitty image, with him to work. It contains everything that is dear to him, including photos of Noriko and Chihiro and the hiragana memo handwritten by Chihiro.
"I feel unsure (of myself) unless I work," Ojima said. "But I have no idea what I am working for. 'Welcome home, a good day's work.' Nobody says that to me in the temporary housing where I live alone. I want to live for somebody I love."