KESENNUMA, Miyagi Prefecture—Ayumu Murakami had wanted to erase all memories of the shattered windows at her school and the overturned car that smashed into a classroom.
But that carnage remains frozen in time.
Kesennuma Koyo High School, which was heavily damaged by the tsunami on March 11, 2011, has been preserved as a relic of the disaster.
And Murakami now emphasizes the importance of maintaining such physical reminders.
“People will gain a real sense of the devastation when they actually see what was left behind by the tsunami rather than through words and photos,” Murakami, 23, said. “We should pass down the horror of the tsunami to posterity.”
Murakami shared her vivid and terrifying memories of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
As a student at the high school, Murakami glanced back while she was fleeing to higher ground after the quake struck. She saw torrents of dark waves crashing over the tops of trees that lined the coast of this city.
“The school cannot survive,” she recalled thinking at the time. “What will happen to the teachers who stayed there?”
Kesennuma Koyo High School was located 500 meters inland from the sea. But the 14-meter-high tsunami still reached the fourth-level of the school’s south building, the one closest to the coast.
About 50 teachers and others had fled to the rooftop of another school building and were safe.
When Murakami finally reached a community hall that was being used as an evacuation center, it was already dark outside. Her mother hugged her when they were reunited.
Two months later, Murakami and other students, accompanied by teachers, returned to the school for the first time since the disaster.
One of the first things they saw was the second story of a ruined house stuck between school buildings.
Murakami, who was in her first year at that time, said she was so terrified by the devastation that she did not feel like taking pictures.
A teacher informed Murakami that a female student died in the disaster.
About 170 students at her high school had reached safety by the time the tsunami slammed into the city. But the girl had left for home before the earthquake struck.
Murakami said she could not hold back her tears when her teacher said that the girl was found with a cellphone in her hand, an indication that she was desperately searching for a way to survive.
She was the school’s only fatality.
With their school unusable, the surviving students continued their classes at makeshift school buildings.
After graduating from high school, Murakami, who wanted to stay in Kesennuma, landed a job at a hotel in a neighboring town.
“I like Kesennuma because I was born and raised here,” she said. “And the city also has a quiet atmosphere.”
Guests at her hotel are offered bus tours to disaster relics that serve to remember the victims and learn lessons from the catastrophe.
Kesennuma Koyo High School will open to the public as a disaster relic starting on March 10. Visitors can see what the school looked like soon after the tsunami.
The tsunami smashed through all windows on the school’s south building from the first to third floors.
The waves also propelled a car through a window of a third-floor classroom, where it remains upside down. Several squashed vehicles are piled up in a corridor connecting school buildings.
Murakami said she initially did not support tours to such disaster memorials because she felt that victims “should forget such horrifying experiences as soon as they can.”
But she has since had a change of heart.
“There are things that you should never forget no matter what,” she said. “The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami are things that you should always remember.”