SENDAI--When a lengthy earthquake rattled her second-floor apartment here early on Nov. 22 last year, Ririka Okabe instinctively grabbed her 5-year-old daughter, Erina.
Seeing Erina continue to cry with fear, Okabe rushed to turn on the TV, as memories of another nightmarish experience nearly six years ago came back to haunt her.
Although Erina was not yet born at the time of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, she is very sensitive to even weak tremors.
Okabe said Erina may remember the strong quake she felt in the womb.
Erina, Okabe’s youngest daughter, also never got to meet her father, Yuki, who died at 49 in the disaster.
Okabe, 47, was born in South Korea’s Jeju Island to parents who worked as farmers, and she grew up there.
She contacted an international dating agency in Busan 17 years ago and met her future husband in the Sendai Airport lobby. Yuki later told Okabe that he had paid 2 million yen ($17,600) to a broker.
From the beginning, Okabe had been determined to marry the person the agency would introduce to her.
After meeting Yuki, she was taken to a small fishing village in the Shimizudahama district in Ishinomaki on Miyagi Prefecture’s Oshika Peninsula. Okaba learned that her husband was a fisherman after reaching the village.
From that day, Okabe worked hard to learn Japanese. While Yuki was shy, Okabe told him “Aishitemasu” (I love you) every day.
When Okabe visited Yuki’s workplace, he handed her an apron and told her to help shuck oysters.
Because Yuki had borrowed money to purchase his home and boat, Okabe devoted all her efforts to helping with his work.
Six years after they married, Okabe acquired Japanese nationality. She took the Japanese name of Ririka after a character in a TV drama. Yuki said he liked the name.
The couple were blessed with many children.
When the 2011 earthquake struck northeastern Japan, Okabe had left her second daughter, Rina, now aged 11, and her eldest son, Yujiro, now 9, at a day-care center. Her eldest daughter Risa, now 13, was a second-grade elementary school student then.
Her fourth child, Erina, was in the womb.
When Okabe took her children to her home by car immediately after the earthquake, Yuki had left the house to close a floodgate as a member of a local fire brigade.
Although Okabe wanted to tell her husband to be careful, she could not do so.
The tsunami spawned by the quake inundated the first floor of the home, and Yuki never returned.
At an evacuation center in Ishinomaki, Okabe was told that her unborn baby’s life was in danger, so she moved to a hospital in Sendai and gave birth there on April 21.
As the widow has four children, she did not have time even to mourn the death of her husband.
After the 2011 disaster, Okabe repeatedly felt anxious and checked if her children were breathing properly in the morning, because she had fostered dark thoughts that one day someone in her family may suddenly disappear.
Her eldest daughter, Risa, moved to a new school in Sendai, but she drew black-colored paintings for the time being after changing schools. Rina, who loved her father the most, frequently cried alone.
When they visited their family’s grave and their grandmother’s home in Ishinomaki, the children always felt ill and vomited.
Okabe said she still does not want to watch news shows about earthquakes and tsunami.
Now, several years after the 2011 disaster, Erina refers to Yujiro and other men in her life as “dad.”
Okabe said she always tells her children, “Your father was a great man. You should become people who help others and do good for others.”
The mother believes the day will eventually come when Erina can understand what she says.
When she was young, Okabe was told by a fortune-teller in South Korea that, “Your fate will change if you cross waters.”
After leaving Jeju Island to grab any chance she could, Okabe now leads a life that she could not even imagine then.
She still wears a ring as a memento of Yuki, which bears the commemorative date of Sept. 8, 2000, when they met for the first time at Sendai Airport.