As junior high school student Yu Maeda stood atop a 10-meter high coastal levee in Iwate Prefecture that the tsunami swept over on March 11 and looked out over the devastated city of Miyako, he saw a sight he will never forget.
As junior high school student Yu Maeda stood atop a 10-meter high coastal levee in Iwate Prefecture that the tsunami swept over on March 11 and looked out over the devastated city of Miyako, he saw a sight he will never forget.
"This is a shock," Maeda said on Oct. 21. "There is nothing here. I can't believe houses used to stand there."
Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, which were devastated by the tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake, are welcoming groups of elementary and junior high school students from outside their prefectures on school trips to view the extent of the damage.
The local communities that have been visited feel they want to pass on the current situation facing the disaster-stricken areas.
Maeda and other third-year students from Toho Junior High School, located in Tokyo's Kunitachi city, visited the Taro district of Miyako in Iwate Prefecture.
The 163 students from the private school were divided into two groups and shown the area by four members of a nonprofit organization seeking to revitalize the city.
At Taro Daiichi Junior High School, where school buildings remained standing, principal Rikiya Sasaki explained how teachers and students evacuated to a mountain behind the school on March 11.
Students from Toho Junior High School have visited the Taro district every year as part of a school trip to the Tohoku region.
This year, however, school officials agonized over whether the tradition should be continued.
"As we carefully considered what to do, we began to feel that there would be significance in learning about the reality of the disaster in Taro because of its history of preparing for tsunami," said Kazunori Kondo, 56, a teacher at the school.
The levee where the students stood, in fact, was the pride of the district, known affectionately before the disaster as "The Great Wall."
In late July a group of 75 second-year students at the junior high school affiliated with Kanagawa University visited Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture.
From a vantage point where much of the central part of the town that was destroyed could be viewed, a girl student said, "While I thought I knew what happened by watching reports on TV, it is completely different when we are actually here. I wonder if there is anything I can do."
(This article was written by Tomoaki Ito and Hideyuki Miura.)