RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Naoya Okamoto, who saw his high school washed away in the tsunami spawned by last year's Great East Japan Earthquake, returned here on March 11 to help him forget the past.
RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Naoya Okamoto, who saw his high school washed away in the tsunami spawned by last year's Great East Japan Earthquake, returned here on March 11 to help him forget the past.
The narrow roads in the area were filled with traffic on a day both sunny and snowy, as residents scattered far and wide streamed back for the most significant event since most of their town was swept away.
"It's important that I come here, for the sake of old classmates," says Okamoto, a Rikuzentakata high school student. "But I'm not here primarily to meet them again, but to look to tell myself the past is finished and to look to the future."
A large white tent filling the Rikuzentakata's elementary school playground covered an altar where those who lost friends and loved ones could offer flowers and incense to the missing, a year to the day of the twin disasters.
The quake and tsunami claimed about 4,670 lives in the prefecture, more than 1,500 of them in Rikuzentakata, where 20,185 homes were destroyed or washed away.
On the one-year anniversary, seats for 2,728 mourners were set up inside the tent, where they could watch a live broadcast from Tokyo of condolences from Emperor Akihito, while 200 more bereaved stood outside. A moment of silence was held precisely at 2:46 p.m., the exact time when the earthquake struck.
The event was jointly organized by Iwate Prefecture and Rikuzentakata, and both the governor and mayor were in attendance. Both leaders spoke of rebuilding the town in a more fortified way to carry on the memory of last year's catastrophe.
Rikuzentakata will look to rebuild on the shoulders of residents such as Okamoto, whose ambition is to become a railroad man and run the town's railway station--once it's rebuilt. About 70 percent of the community was damaged, with its downtown now a flat plain with mounds of neatly segregated rubble, wood and steel.
Near the elementary school in Rikuzentakata, another group of residents held their own anniversary rite on the property of Fumiko Osaka, who lost her house and entire family in the tsunami. The participants offered stew, barbecue and dance troupe performances to travelers going to and from the official ceremony. It contrasted wildly with the somber landscape.
"We have to offer a reason to come here," other than mourning rituals, says co-organizer Tsuyoshi Komoriya, who did not attend the government-organized event. "Frankly I wish there was no ceremony. I wish today was a regular day, because outside people will forget this place from tomorrow, but rebuilding has to happen every day."