YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--A teenager who has been taking photos of his hometown on the same day each month to record the rebuilding process from last year’s disaster is handing over the project to his sister because he will go to university in April.
YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--A teenager who has been taking photos of his hometown on the same day each month to record the rebuilding process from last year’s disaster is handing over the project to his sister because he will go to university in April.
Jun Saito has been taking images of the former fishing town on the 11th of each month since the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami inundated this coastline, also destroying his home.
The town had a pre-disaster population of about 18,000. The tsunami, which reached 29.5 meters, claimed some 700 lives in the town.
More than half of the homes and structures in Yamada were destroyed in the tsunami or fire that engulfed the community.
Saito was a familiar face among town hall employees as he showed up regularly with his digital camera to shoot from the rooftop of the town hall building.
He asked his father, Tatsuhiko, 60, to buy him a digital camera so he could document the rebuilding effort.
“I wanted to observe how the town will be changed,” said Saito, who lives in temporary housing with his family.
Saito said the town was strewn with debris last April.
He documented the removal of mountains of debris in the months that followed.
In June, only the concrete foundations of homes remained.
By then, the landscape was a wasteland. After early summer, little change was noticeable in his photos. But since then, prefabricated shops have popped up here and there.
Saito said the pace of reconstruction is slower than he had expected. With college looming, Saito said he had no choice but to hand over the project of documenting the process of reconstruction to his sister, Minami, as he will be leaving town.
Saito will study English at Morioka University in Takizawa, Iwate Prefecture. He hopes to work at an international airport in the future.
He has nurtured the dream since he visited the Netherlands as a second-year student at senior high school, his first overseas trip. His hometown has had exchanges with the Dutch city of Zeist.
Although he thought about remaining in Yamada and finding a job, he opted to go to college at the urging of his father.
Instead, his 21-year-old sister will move back to Yamada to work at the town hall from April after finishing her course at a vocational school in Morioka.
His sister agreed to take over his role of photographing the reconstruction effort since the job has not finished yet.
Saito said he has yet come up with a clear picture of what he will do with his life.
But he is sure of one thing: He wants to return to Yamada some day.