Ms. S (a woman in her 60’s) S さん （６０代）

June 4, 2016 I was at home when the earthquakes occurred. I went outside to wait for my husband. I saw a boy, a high school student, came running on the road towards me shouting “get out!” I could see the black Tsunami behind him. I followed him, and we escaped to the top of a pedestrian bridge together. There was a rush of cars underneath the bridge and some were being washed away. A young man on the bridge shouted, “put your hands in your pockets!” I obeyed his direction and put my hands in my pockets. After the water had gone down, the mountain of debris prevented me from coming down from the bridge. The men around me helped me to come down. I escaped to the building of a trucking company. Many of the kind drivers there helped me. They took me into one of their trucks with other strangers to stay. It was warm as they generously made fire continuously with the gasoline they had. One night, we heard a voice coming from top of a tree saying “help!” The men there helped the person by standing on top of the truck. It was good that there was a well nearby. Fish that had been transported by trucks and food items from affected grocery stores washed up to the mountain side. We collected and cooked them using drum cans. I used to run a boarding house and was used to cooking for a crowd. I liked to cook and it didn’t bother me that I was cooking for dozens of victims. My cooking experience came in handy. I was creative in making the most of what was available, for example, I made porridge when we were short of rice and made some jam from apples to preserve them longer. We also did things like wrapping plates with plastic wrap so that they didn’t have to be washed. We craved for sweets back then. On the other hand, we got to eat some channel rockfish that were on a delivery truck, which were very expensive. I want to take good care of our mountains so that our well water stays clean. My husband was working in a freezer for fish near the harbor. When the earthquake happened, I was crying thinking my husband might have died being locked inside of the freezer with the power doors being disabled due to power outage. I have given up hope thinking he might have either been frozen to death or crashed under heavy materials. I later found out that my husband escaped to the mountain side immediately after the earthquake happened. I also learned that he came looking for me few days later. He had gone without eating for a while but someone he knew gave him some rice balls. When I went home to clean up, the picture frame was standing in a different location from before, and I knew my husband had been there. We moved to our daughter’s house in Sendai City after ten days. I was taken by surprise how little the lives in Sendai had been affected by the disaster. I suffer from Parkinson’s disease and went around many pharmacies looking for some medicine. I still fear earthquakes. We demolished our house that was damaged by the Tsunami and built a new one. We also bought a new car as our old one got washed away. We sent two daughters to private collages thus we have no savings and are financially very tight. A grand child was born in 2014. The power of a new life is remarkable. I took the role of the chairperson of the local neighborhood association in 2015, with an intention to give back for what our children had received while they were growing up. My life changed substantially after experiencing the March 11 disaster.