MINAMI-SANRIKU, Miyagi Prefecture--Should it stay or should it go?
It might look like a pile of rusty metal, but this town's former disaster management center building has taken on the solemn, dignified aura of a memorial shrine.
Forty-three town officials and other residents at the building were killed or remain missing from the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Now, locals and even visitors on pilgrimages offer prayers, flowers and other offerings at this symbolic ruin for the approximate 830 victims of Minami-Sanriku as a whole.
Since the town center was almost completely destroyed by the tsunami, survivors have engaged in a heated and emotional debate on preserving the shell of the building.
Now it's finally been decided to let it be and allow future generations to decide the building's fate.
When some people said the hulking structure reminded them too much of the suffering and heartbreak, the town government at one time decided to dismantle it.
But an expert panel set up by the Miyagi prefectural government proposed the preservation of the site, saying it “can send a strong message that is comparable with the message for peace entrenched by Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome.”
Based on the proposal, the prefectural government and the town office agreed last year to bring the structure under the prefecture’s ownership through 2031 and then let residents decide on the building's fate.
“We have recognized that it requires much time to decide on whether to preserve the relic through discussions with the younger generations to come, who will bear this town’s future,” said Mayor Jin Sato.
Debate over whether to maintain symbols of natural disasters, wars or accidents is not new in Japan, and even the future of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was only safeguarded after a long and emotional debate among survivors and other citizens.
It took more than two decades, in 1966, from when the city was flattened by a U.S. atomic bomb in August 1945 for the Hiroshima city assembly to adopt a resolution calling for the building to be preserved as a memorial.
“Discussions on whether to preserve the A-bomb dome or to dismantle it involved much emotional debate, which often caused frictions among residents,” recalled Eiko Mikami, a 69-year-old from Hiroshima who participated in a citizens’ campaign calling for the dome’s preservation.
“The lesson we learned from the experience is that residents (in Minami-Sanriku) should not come to a hasty conclusion,” she said.
Hiroshi Harada, a 76-year-old former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, said he supports the preservation of disaster relics in the Tohoku region, saying that the A-bomb dome has served as a visible reminder of the tragic event even for the generations who have no first-hand knowledge of World War II.
“Such relics serve as a reminder of a tragic event not only for contemporary people but also for future generations,” Harada said.
“Survivors who can tell their account of such an event will eventually die out, and without a visible relic, memories will also eventually fade away generation by generation.”