Miura Sumiko, Saichi Michiko and Kajiwara Yoshito were displaced from their homes in Minami Sanriku following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region of Japan. They are temporarily living in a small hotel in the nearby town of Naruko in the Miyagi Prefecture. They are interviewed in person by Jegan Vincent de Paul on July 21, 2012 with the assistance of and translation by Takaro Saito.
Jegan Vincent de Paul (JVDP): Where are you all from?
Kajiwara Yoshito: We are all from Utatsu [area of Minami Sanriku], and got to know each other here.
JVDP: Do you have children
Yoshito: I have two daughters who are in Sendai now.
JVDP: Do they visit you?
Yoshito: Yes. Since I came here, a younger one came here three times and an older visited me once with my grandchildren.
JVDP: How long have you all been here?
Miura Sumiko: I will have been here for 3 months on the 21st of July.
JVDP: Did you all come together?
Saichi Michiko: Yes, for the second evacuation.
JVDP: What were your occupations?
KY: I was a carpenter.
Michiko: I was doing nothing because I’m old, even though I have a field. My children are all dispersed all over Japan now.
Sumiko: I was a housewife.
JVDP: How long have your generations been in Minami Sanriku?
Jegan Vincent de Paul (JVDP): Where are you all from?
Kajiwara Yoshito (KY): We are all from Utatsu [area of Minami Sanriku], and got to know each other here.
JVDP: Do you have children
KY: I have two daughters who are in Sendai now.
JVDP: Do they visit you?
KY: Yes. Since I came here, a younger one came here three times and an older visited me once with my grandchildren.
JVDP: How long have you all been here?
Miura Sumiko (MS): I will have been here for 3 months on the 21st of July.
JVDP: Did you all come together?
Saichi Michiko (SM): Yes, for the second evacuation.
JVDP: What were your occupations?
KY: I was a carpenter.
Michiko: I was doing nothing because I’m old, even though I have a field. My children are all dispersed all over Japan now.
Sumiko: I was a housewife.
JVDP: How long have your generations been in Minami Sanriku?
KY: I’m the second one.
Michiko: Mine is very old, so I don’t even know. I don’t think it’s more than ten generations. Also, our house got burned drastically three times.
JVDP: Were you living in the same house?
Michiko: Yes We have so many graves of our ancestors.
JVDP: How are the houses now?
Michiko: They were all washed away.
KY: Mine too. They are completely gone.
Michiko: We had so many houses including small ones and storages – we even had some ancient machines to make clothes too, but they are all gone.
KY: Her husband got washed away by tsunami and killed … so she’s alone now.
Michiko: Our house had survived some tsunamis before, so we thought we would be ok. One of our relatives in our house was actually taking pictures of the tsunami. She was found in a place two rooms apart from where she was, and her husband was found offshore one day later. It was such a big tsunami that old families have never experienced anything like it. The announcement said that the tsunami was six meters high, which is as high as the tsunami in Meiji era, so he thought he would be fine and just looking at tsunami. Then he got washed away.
KY: The announcement was 6 meters, but the actual height was over 20 meters. So, even on higher places, the power of the wave was too strong and washed away everything.
Michiko: People thought they would be fine, so they went back to get their stuff after the evacuation – and all of them were washed away and killed.
JVDP: Where any of them your family members?
SM: No, they are my neighbors.
JVDP: Do you have difficulties trusting the official announcement now?
Michiko: Yes.
KY: The announcement of 6 meters was awful.
Michiko: Everyone around me trusted that announcement, so that’s why they were all washed away and killed.
KY: The announcement made us relieved, so the actual one surprised us so much.
MS: But it was in evitable. Even the person who made the announcement was washed away and killed. No one was expecting it.
Michiko: Thirty-eight committee members of the local government were killed.
JVDP: When was the correction of the announcement made?
Michiko: I think it was more than 30 minutes later.
JVDP: Were there any other announcements during that 30 minutes?
SM: No because the electricity was cut off.
KY: So the TV was off, and I was listening to the radio in a car – and there was no correction afterthe announcement of 6 metes.
SM: It was 2:30PM and we were just drinking tea and waiting.
KY: The next thing I heard after the correction of the 6-meter tsunami was the alert for a huge tsunami. MS: I didn’t hear either the alert or the announcement of 6 meters.
JVDP: Where are you from in Utatsu?)
Sumiko: They are from Natari, which is on the coast side, and I’m from Tanoura.
JVDP: I remember Natari has an elementary school there – did it also get water on the first floor?
SM: Yes. Right now the school is relocated to Satomaizaki.
JVDP: What did you learn from you parents and grandparents about tsunamis?
MS: My house is right in front of the sea, and when the Chile earthquake happened and the tsunami hit here, our house was just covered with water, even on the first floor. Anything we learned from our parents? I don’t know, just that we need to go to a higher place to evacuate. We have our main-family house on the higher place, and last time the tsunami came, we were safe there, but this time even that higher place was covered with water.
JVDP: Can you tell us about your experience of previous tsunamis?
SM: We had marks of how high tsunamis in the past reached everywhere around this area, so all old people were talking to each other that this tsunami would not reach those marks. However, this time, the huge earthquakes lowered the land by seventy-five cetimeters which raised the sea level, so the marks could not have been correct at all. Also, we heard something … what is it called? It was like an explosion. It was like a huge explosion of dynamite or something. We heard it twice in the direction of the sea. I felt like something got cracked on the ground of the sea.
MS: That’s our guess – we all heard them.
SM: They happened right before the tsunami attacked us. The sound was so loud. MS: It was something so loud that I had never heard anything like it before.
SM: It sounded similar to thunder.
JVDP: Can you talk about the distinctive landscape in this area?
KY: Our ocean is very beautiful, and I very much appreciate that. Even when I see other oceans, I never think they are as beautiful as ours. This huge tsunami destroyed everything beautiful too, so we are very sad about it.
JVDP: Is the ocean and its beauty a reason to keep living in this place? Do you still want to keep living here?
SM: No. Everyone was washed away you know…
MS: There is one thing that I realized after the tsunami. Did you realize that in this area, there is a sign of the maximum estimation point where the tsunami would reach? I don’t know who decided the point, but this tsunami reached exactly that point. It was so strange – we only realized it after this tsunami came. We want to know who picked it.
MS: Utatsu was such a good place to live before this tsunami attacked us … we had so much good food from the ocean, including abalone, sea urchin and octopus, and it doesn’t snow in winter either. We always were saying that Utatsu is quiet and peaceful, a great place. Then this happened … and everything changed.
KY: It feels very weird… I feel like it’s something like god’s trick. Everything was washed away… we lost everything.
JVDP: What do you think about the ocean now? Do you have the same feeling toward it?
KY: It changed so much.
SM: I don’t want to see the ocean now.
KY: In the past, it was something just fun, but now it’s such an angry and terrifying thing.
JVDP: Will your feeling about the ocean change? When I talked with a fisherman today, he said that it would change as time goes because he needs to fish anyway.
MS: As time goes, it will change.
KY: Our live consists of half fishing and half agriculture, so I think our feeling toward the sea is a bit different from the fishermen’s feeling toward the ocean.
MS: I love the ocean. I want to see the ocean everyday, I need it.
JVDP: What’s your hope now? What do you want the most now? How do you want to live in Utatsu from now on?
MS: Nevertheless, I still want to live in Utatsu. I just want to live on a higher place in Utatsu.
KY: I don’t know, I’m wondering what I can do as a carpenter now. I don’t think it’s feasible to build a new house somewhere in Utatsu because I’m old now. I’m considering moving to another place too, but I don’t know yet. That is my opinion.
JVDP: Did the tsunami make the community unite more or anything similar to that?
SM: Well, all of our neighbors got dispersed, so… Also, I’m leaving here tomorrow to move into one of thirty-two temporary shelters newly built on a higher place in Natari.
MS: I’m going to a similar one but in a different location sometime at the beginning of August.
JVDP: How did you first feel about coming to Naruko?
MS: I was anxious at the beginnin, but I enjoyed being here – we were treated very well. I’m glad that I came here.
KY: We call it our second home. People treated us as a part of their family instead of their guests, and it was very nice. I learned a lot about good things in this area, and I want to come back.
JVDP: What did you bring with you?
MS: I just brought clothes for winter because it was cold.
SM: I couldn’t bring anything because it was right after the tsunami.
KY: It was so cold. I stayed outside in a vegetable field for two days after the tsunami. I just made fire by myself and survived it. No one was looking for me because the roads were cut down. At night, it was completely dark even though it was close to my old house.
JVDP: What is your feeling about losing your properties and belongings?
All: We feel bad about it and sad.
KY: The only picture we have now is the one we took when we first came here.