ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--The weather had warmed up a bit on March 1, but Tetsuya Tadano decides to remain comfortably seated at a “kotatsu” (foot warmer table) covered by a quilt.
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--The weather had warmed up a bit on March 1, but Tetsuya Tadano decides to remain comfortably seated at a “kotatsu” (foot warmer table) covered by a quilt.
The sixth-grader at an elementary school here pulls out his favorite photo that shows the Kitakamigawa river, mountains in the background and clouds dotting the blue sky.
“I like this photo because it has all the places full of my memories. One is the place where I rode around on a bicycle. Another is where I played soccer. Another is where I had snowball fights …,” Tetsuya, 12, says.
It takes him a bit more time before he can talk about the photos lining the Buddhist altar in the room of his mother, younger sister and grandfather.
When the Great East Japan Earthquake struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, Tetsuya was at Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. He and the other students fled to the schoolyard after the shaking stopped.
“My mom came to the school (for me and my sister). So I handed my helmet to mom, saying ‘You should wear this because ‘kawara’ (Japanese traditional roof tiles) could fall and hit you,’” Tetsuya says. “But she told me, ‘You should keep it.’”
When the students were heading for higher ground, the tsunami struck, sweeping the boy to a hillside where he became buried in mud. He said the helmet protected him from serious injury.
“My mom always said the right thing,” he says.
After crying for help for about 20 minutes, Tetsuya was ready to give up hope of being rescued. But a male classmate, whose left arm was fractured, saved Tetsuya by removing the mud.
Two days later, Tetsuya met his father, Hideaki, 40, at an evacuation center.
“Where is Mina? Where is Mina?” Hideaki frantically asked about Tetsuya’s younger sister. It was the first time Tetsuya had seen his father cry.
Of Okawa Elementary School’s 108 students, 74 were killed or went missing. Mina, a 9-year-old third-grader, was one of them. Ten of the school’s 13 teachers and staff members were dead or missing.
After checking on the children at the school, Tetsuya's mother, Shiroe, 41, returned to the family’s house where the boy's 67-year-old grandfather, Hiroshi, also lived. Following the quake, Hiroshi apparently went to check on his fishing boat he used to catch "shijimi" (freshwater clams).
Both Shiroe and Hiroshi were killed when the tsunami swamped the coast.
With their home washed away by the waves, Tetsuya, his father and his grandmother, Akiko, 65, moved into company housing with four members of a family they have known for many years.
Okawa Elementary School was also destroyed by the tsunami, but it borrowed facilities from a different elementary school to hold classes. Tetsuya and other surviving students go to the school together.
Before the March 11 disaster, Tetsuya often played with Mina after school. Following her death, he would stand in front of the Buddhist altar in the room, telling the photo of his smiling sister, “It’s no fun with you not here.”
His homeroom teacher told Tetsuya: “You have friends. Look forward. You have a future.” Tetsuya says he initially was in no mood to listen to the teacher’s advice.
But later, he learned that the teacher’s father was also killed in the disaster. Tetsuya said he thought, “The teacher is in the same situation as me,” and accepted the teacher’s advice.
Tetsuya has been a shutterbug since receiving his first digital camera as a fourth-grader. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, his subject matter shifted toward nature and landscapes in his hometown--and places that could rekindle memories of happier times.
One of his pictures shows sprouts emerging from the ground. Another photo features driftwood floating in the Kitakamigawa river, while another is of the setting sun.
On Oct. 23, when Hideaki was driving home Tetsuya, they found his grandfather’s fishing boat, the Myojin Maru, which had washed ashore. Tetsuya immediately took a picture of the boat.
He recalls getting into the boat with Mina and describes the smiling faces of his sister and grandfather.
Mina was good at checking if the shijimi clams caught by her grandfather contained fleshy meat. She scooped the clams with both hands and shook them near her ear.
“If the clams don't have meat, they make the sound ‘kara kara,’” Mina would say.
Another of Tetsuya’s cherished photos is of his classmates smiling in front of a blackboard. The photo was taken before the Great East Japan Earthquake.
“This is my treasure,” he says, adding that he always puts it in his school bag.
The class had 15 students. Six of them died in the tsunami and two moved to different schools, leaving Tetsuya’s class with only seven students.
He also put the photo under the cover of his pillow. When his classmates appeared in his dreams, he would wake up sobbing.
Ahead of the graduation ceremony, the seven remaining sixth-graders are now secretly preparing a “surprise” event to express their gratitude to their teachers and parents.
Tetsuya’s father initially said he could not attend the March 9 event because of his job. But he later decided to go.
Every morning, Tetsuya wakes up earlier than his father and grandmother and heads to the Buddhist altar in the room. He says that when he prays in front of his mother’s photo, he sees images of them together going to restaurants, walking or shopping in supermarkets.
Shiroe’s birthday was March 11. On that day last year, the family had planned a birthday party, and the children had decided on their own that Mina would serve as the host of the party.
“This year, we also want to hold a birthday party for my mom in front of her photo. The birthdays of my family members are important days for us forever,” he says.
Tetsuya always returns to his favorite photo of the mountain, blue sky and clouds that he took in September last year. In the picture, the clouds appear to glow from the rays of the sun.
“I feel that, above the clouds, there is a pre-disaster Okawa district, where people are living happily,” he says.