MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture--This coastal town has been destroyed twice in the past year: first swallowed by a great wave that killed 638 of its people, and then hit with a nuclear accident that rendered it semi-uninhabitable and unfit for farming.
MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture--This coastal town has been destroyed twice in the past year: first swallowed by a great wave that killed 638 of its people, and then hit with a nuclear accident that rendered it semi-uninhabitable and unfit for farming.
It is hard to decide which has had the larger impact on the town, but as Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai said a few weeks ago, today is a day for mourning, not for pushing an anti-nuclear agenda. It was thus with a heavy heart that crowds of black-clad mourners gathered at the town’s cultural hall to pay their respect to those who lost their lives a year ago today on March 11, 2011.
“It changed life in Minami-Soma forever,” said Sakurai, who catapulted to international fame last year after pleading for help and supplies for the isolated, cut-off town via YouTube videos. “For those who lost their lives in this terrible incident … there are no words.”
The mayor said the local government would be doing all it could to ensure a safe and livable environment for the town’s citizens, based on an anti-nuclear power principle. He thanked all the volunteers and donors that have so far lent their time, money and energy toward that end.
After televised addresses from Emperor Akihito and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, as well as a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m., the time the quake hit, representatives of the bereaved families offered emotional tributes to those they lost.
Chouhachi Kanno, 60, lost all four of his immediate family--his wife, mother and two children, and another eight of his extended family in the tsunami. His mother and son’s bodies have still not been recovered.
“I always think, ‘Why didn’t they escape?’ My friends say they don’t know how to speak to me. I don’t even know how to feel myself these days,” said Kanno, who now lives alone in temporary housing.
“I think about how they died every day. Did they struggle in the water? Did it hurt? I’ll never know. But I lie awake thinking about it.”
Seventeen-year-old Tsubasa Yokoyama also spoke about the three family members that he lost: his father, his sister and his grandmother.
“My grandmother Keiko used to make such delicious food--my friends always said how good her curry and nabe were,” he said. “My father taught me the importance of challenging myself. I hope to one day be as confident as he was.”
Yokoyama was also presented with 190 million yen in donations ($2.3 million) on behalf of the 63 children under 18 in Minami-Soma who lost one or both parents. The city has put forward a plan to support these children--four of them orphans--with a yearly stipend until they reach the age of 18.
Minami-Soma assembly member Takeshi Hirata said that the town must do its best to move forward from the disaster.
“We have to clean the rivers, wash the streets, decontaminate our schools,” he said. “We have to return this place to what it was.”