OFUNATO, Iwate Prefecture--Somewhere, a little girl who lost her home in the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake is smiling, as a 9-meter Christmas tree adorned with festive lights now stands in the devastated city.
OFUNATO, Iwate Prefecture--Somewhere, a little girl who lost her home in the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake is smiling, as a 9-meter Christmas tree adorned with festive lights now stands in the devastated city.
The tree was a gift from Tokyo's Meiji University, which responded to a comment from the girl from Ofunato, who was unhappy because she had no Christmas tree in the compound of her temporary housing facility.
The tree is a fir that was harvested from an area in Tsumagoi village in Gunma Prefecture. Normally, the fir trees are brought to adorn Meiji's Surugadai campus in Tokyo, but this year the university donated its tree to Ofunato.
It now stands in a vacant lot in this northern community that was previously littered with the detritus of the earthquake and tsunami.
As the lights were first illuminated on Dec. 5, local senior high school students sang a hymn, accompanied by the warm glow of the lights in a cold, blowing winter wind.