NATORI, Miyagi Prefecture--As Norihiko Kuwayama, a local doctor specializing in psychosomatic medicine, leads some students back to Yuriage Elementary School here for the first time since the March 11 disaster, he is helping their recovery.
NATORI, Miyagi Prefecture--As Norihiko Kuwayama, a local doctor specializing in psychosomatic medicine, leads some students back to Yuriage Elementary School here for the first time since the March 11 disaster, he is helping their recovery."These are the stairs we took to escape the tsunami," Kuwayama said when 31 students visited their school on Dec. 4, under his supervision.Along with taking the students back to their school, Kuwayama is having them recreate a diorama of Natori with paper clay the way they remembered it before the disaster.Kuwayama is providing children with opportunities to share--while they stroll around the town together--experiences of their pre-quake school life, as well as traumatic ones when the ferocious waves swept ashore.This, the 48-year-old doctor said, will help children come to terms with their experiences and put their minds at ease following the ordeal they experienced together.In their school building, while the mud has been cleared from the first floor, which was flooded during the tsunami, school bags and keyboard harmonicas were piled in a corner of the entrance hall."I was so happy to be in our classroom with my classmates," a fifth-year female student said. Students who found their nameplates on their lockers could not stop from expressing their joy.The city's death toll rose to more than 900 on March 11. Numerous houses around the school were washed away by the powerful tsunami, forcing the students to attend classes at a nearby inland school.Kuwayama, who serves concurrently as the president of Tohoku International Clinic in the town and as the head of the Chikyu-no-Stage nonprofit organization, initiated the campaign in October, organized by the institution.About 50 students from Yuriage and other elementary schools are participating in the project to replicate the "lost town in the path of a tsunami" through creating dioramas.The intent is to help children face their memories head-on by sharing recollections while making the paper clay model.According to Kuwayama, the number of children who reported showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the temblor has increased, as time passes. Some children cannot even bathe due to their fear of water, while others have nightmares of being engulfed by a tsunami, he said."To overcome what children went through in the tsunami, it is important for them to connect fragmented pieces of memories and collect their thoughts," Kuwayama said.The diorama will be completed later this month and will be exhibited in Natori's city hall. The replica of the town, created on a 1-square-meter board, reproduces the playground equipment at the elementary school, students' fathers' cars, ramen restaurants where families ate together, and other objects.Pleased to see positive signs from the campaign, the mother of a second-year elementary school female student said, "My daughter has become full of spirit again after she joined the project, although she has seemed depressed as houses of many friends of hers were swept away."Kuwayama plans for students to create a diorama of Natori before the tsunami hit the area, as well as one for the city of the future."I do not want children to spend the rest of their lives in fear of the sea," Kuwayama said. "I hope they will be able to chalk it up to experience and look to the future in a positive way."