MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture--Every week, a woman prays in front of the rusted skeletal framework of a building that once housed this town’s disaster response center, the site where her husband was swept away by the 2011 tsunami.
MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture--Every week, a woman prays in front of the rusted skeletal framework of a building that once housed this town’s disaster response center, the site where her husband was swept away by the 2011 tsunami.
“It’s getting warm, so I brought you this,” she said, holding a can of beer in front of a stand for flowers, in late March. “You must be thirsty.”
The woman in her 50s hopes the structure will remain in Minami-Sanriku, saying it is a comforting reminder of her husband and one of only a handful of places left where she can feel his presence.
But her parents-in-law want the three-story building dismantled as soon as possible. They said they cannot mourn their son quietly with the constant stream of onlookers flocking to the site to view the testimony of the tsunami’s destructive force.
The dispute over the future of the building extends well beyond the family.
“Town residents have been split over the question,” Minami-Sanriku Mayor Jin Sato acknowledged. “There has been an atmosphere discouraging even the town's civil servants from speaking about it since many lives of their relatives were also lost.”
What to do with the 12-meter high structure has become somewhat of a taboo topic. The woman said the issue is too delicate to broach with her in-laws, who live with her. And many locals are reluctant to openly debate plans for the building.
The woman’s husband, a town employee, was urging people to flee from an imminent tsunami triggered by the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake that jolted Japan’s northeastern coast on March 11, 2011.
He and 42 others in the building, most of them town employees, were killed. They were among 800 people in Minami-Sanriku who died or went missing in the catastrophe.
The town of 14,000 has been going through a sweeping transformation since the disaster. Work to elevate the land has been under way to protect residents and descendants from a future tsunami.
Fierce opposition greeted Miyagi Governor Yoshihiro Murai when he visited the town in January to inform the mayor that the prefectural government wanted to put the building under its ownership until 2031.
About 30 protesters held up a banner to underscore their desire to tear down the rusting structure.
“We can still see the expressions of our father and mother, son and daughter, husband and wife. We are pained and vexed. We urge the town to demolish the building soon,” the banner read.
Miyoko Chiba, 68, who was among the protesters, lost her son-in-law, a town employee, when the tsunami hit the disaster response center building. The couple’s 3-year-old daughter and the parents of the son-in-law were also killed in the disaster.
Chiba’s daughter survived while visiting Kesennuma, a neighboring city in the prefecture.
But the daughter, overwhelmed by grief, developed depression after moving into temporary housing and would not interact with others. She now lives alone outside Minami-Sanriku. She said the sight of the ruined building is “unbearable.”
She also declined Chiba’s invitation to move in with her parents when their new home is built in the town next year.
“Do we really need to keep the building that still traumatizes those who lost their loved ones?” Chiba asked.
The governor’s meeting with the mayor in January came after a panel of experts recommended to prefectural officials a month earlier that the skeletal framework, “a symbol of the disaster,” be preserved.
“It has a global recognition comparable to that of the Atomic Bomb Dome (in Hiroshima),” the panel said.
The panel was established in 2013 on Murai’s order to discuss what to do with the Minami-Sanriku building and other damaged structures. The governor was growing anxious that powerful reminders of the tsunami were disappearing in Miyagi Prefecture.
The No. 18 Kyotoku Maru, a 330-ton trawler that was carried by the tsunami into a residential district of Kesennuma, was dismantled in 2013. A large majority of the city’s residents backed the idea to tear it down despite the Kesennuma mayor’s insistence that it should be preserved.
In Onagawa, the demolitions of two four-story buildings that were both overturned by the tsunami were decided to make way for rebuilding work.
The Minami-Sanriku town hall was leaning toward preserving the disaster response center building in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
But after hearing the grievances of some bereaved families, Sato in September 2011 announced that the town government would dismantle it.
About a year later, three separate petitions were filed by residents, including relatives of the dead. One called for preservation, another for postponing the demolition, and the third one urged dismantling in the near future.
The town government in 2013 reaffirmed its policy to tear it down, in line with the town assembly’s adoption of a petition a year earlier.
“The town hall cannot pay the upkeep costs if the building is preserved,” a town official explained.
After this development, the governor stepped in.
“I understand that it will be difficult for the town to have closure soon on the issue that is now splitting the town,” Murai said to the mayor. “I would like town officials to decide when the building is returned to the town 20 years later.”
The time frame of 20 years was based on the fact that it took Hiroshima 21 years after the 1945 atomic bombing to finally decide to preserve the Atomic Bomb Dome, now a World Heritage site. There had been an emotionally charged debate until the prickly issue was put to rest.
In his visit to Minami-Sanriku again on April 9, Murai reiterated his stance. The prefecture plans to pick up the tab for keeping the structure.
The town hall sent questionnaires to each household this month to find out where residents stood on the issue.
Wataru Oikawa, 33, welcomes the governor’s proposal. He submitted a petition with the town assembly in January, saying that the disaster response center building should go under the prefectural government’s ownership until Minami-Sanriku residents can discuss the issue in a calm manner.
He said it took him a year or so to accept the death of his father, a town employee who also remained in the building when tsunami approached.
“I could finally regain some normalcy because there has been progress in rebuilding homes and lives,” he said.
While Oikawa is aware that many are still struggling to deal with their losses, he also thinks it is important to preserve a reminder of the disaster for future generations.
“I hope that we would be able to fully explain why we reached a decision, whatever it is, to children who will forge the future of the town,” he said.
Mayor Sato is expected to announce his decision on whether or not to accept the governor's proposal as early as May.