Harvard Workshop at ASIJ

It has been more than 8 years since the 3.11 disaster, but I still remember the moment my family and I first saw the footage of the tsunami on every Japanese news channel. I was living in Sao Paulo, Brazil at this time, and I had woken up to my family staring at the TV screen with expressions I had never seen before. However, what I saw on the actual screen took me by even more shock. The same video of a huge wave rushing into a town was playing over and over, with repeating headlines and the announcer making demands to evacuate as soon as possible. Because of the flipped time difference, it had already been several hours since the initial disaster had occurred, and all of the media was blowing up. What I remember vividly was the feeling of worry but powerlessness, since all we could do was hope and pray from the other side of the world that family and friends were safe. All during this time I was having a hard time believing that such a disaster had struck my home country. We actually had a friend visiting us from Japan, and she had left the airport not even 24 hours before the earthquake struck. I was confused, scared, and anxious. We spent almost that entire day trying to contact as many people as possible, switching between every news channel, and reading all news articles that were published. Over the next few months, our small Japanese community did everything we could to raise awareness for the cause. We set up donation boxes at school, and my mother even did a small presentation to my second grade class. After the several years that has passed, it is getting easier by the day for people to forget how influential and big of an impact this disaster was for thousands of people. I think it is important that the hardship people went through is not forgotten.