9th Anniversary of 3/11

As a child, I never stopped to truly reflect on the complexity of my upbringing. I was born in Sendai, Miyagi, but moved to Tokyo, Japan, just two months after I was born. Although I had a Japanese father and a Taiwanese mother, I never got to connect with either of my parents’ families as I moved to Dallas, Texas, when I was just two years old. I grew up with a lack of connection with any particular place—I felt my nationality, ethnicity, and my sense of belonging, pulling my identity into different directions. I was standing in line at the library at school when I overheard my third-grade teacher conversing with another teacher about a humongous earthquake and tsunami that swept over Japan. Hearing it the first time, I thought it was fake news. But it was in the car ride home when my mom told me that it was true. Although I only visited Sendai as many times as I could count on my right hand, I was worried about my family there. We couldn’t reach them through the phone, and social media wasn’t something my family and I took part in yet. My parents stayed up late that night to call my family when it was morning over in Japan. The next day, I was relieved to hear that everyone was alive and well. However, my cousins lost their home and all of their belongings to the tsunami—it was still a harsh reality. Even though I was not in Japan at the time of the Tohoku Earthquake, 3/11 still had a profound effect on me. The physical tremors and aftershocks did not reach me, but the figurative aftershocks of 3/11 did. The fear, insecurity, and worry was something that took over my family and myself at the time. I remind myself never to forget the minuteness of humanity in the face of mother nature.