March 11th 2011 Personal Experience

I was fifteen years old when I experienced the March 11th disaster. I was in my fourth period class. The tremors started small, but quickly increased in strength and size. We all ducked under the tables and waited for the shaking to stop. We were then all told to go out onto the field, and we all just sat there. It seemed like a lifetime, but it was probably only 2 or 3. The school then sent us onto our school buses to go home. My bus was the only one that didn't have a route using the highway. Thus we got home within 2.5 hours. However, the other buses used the highway and some didn't get home for 12 hours. Everything on every TV channel was about the earthquake and tsunami hitting Fukushima. But in Tokyo, there wasn't much damage. I think that's what gave me a sense of being removed from the situation. A book shelf in our house collapsed but that was it. What was on the news seemed like it was coming from another country. This wasn't Japan. This wasn't related to me. This sense of being removed from the situation increased as my parents sent me to New York to stay with a family friend. They were worried about the nuclear plant meltdown and its effect on me. I took it as a kind of vacation. I spent three weeks in New York, with no school. Even when I came back and school resumed, nothing changed. It wasn't until one year later during a Japanese Literature class when we read "March Was Made of Yarn" that it really hit home for the first time.