Kizuna: Nikkei Stories from the 2011 Japan Earthquake & Tsunami

This year, March 11th marks the fifth anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the coastal Tohoku Region in Japan, wiping out towns and villages and changing life there forever.

As Vancouver filmmaker Linda Ohama nears the completion of her 3.11 documentary Tohoku no Shingetsu (New Moon Over Tohoku), it is an important time to pause and remember the thousands of lives lost and the tens of thousands that continue to recover.

Friend and Sendai resident, Tsutomu Nambu, works for Miyagi Prefecture and offers these sobering statistics on the number of people still in “kasetsu” or “temporary housing ...

In March 2011, it was only a month ago that it had begun working on a publishing company focused on Japanese culture. My job was to take care of a site whose content was related to that theme.

At that March 11, in the morning of Brazil, I heard on the radio that a strong earthquake had happened in Japan. Although earthquakes occur regularly in the country, by the tone of the news, I realized that it had been much more serious.

I went to the office, following the news on my cell phone. Estimates of the number of deaths ...

Remember March 11, 2011? 

I was just waking up and getting ready for school when I received a call from CBC radio asking for a comment when I still didn’t have a clue about the tragedy that had befallen the Tohoku region of Japan where I had lived for nine years.

There were the first frenetic and panicked TV images: the explosions at the Daiichi Nuclear Reactor in Fukushima, terrifying images of buildings shaking, falling apart, roads ripped apart, then that slow moving black wave crawling over the Tohoku shoreline then moving inland swallowing, engulfing everything, literally, cars, boats ...

“How was your trip to Japan?” 

It’s a question I’ve been asked several times since we returned from our Goodwill Tour to Tohoku last month.

“It went really well,” I would say. But after that, I would have a hard time finding the words to describe it.

“It wasn’t like your typical tour of Japan,” said one of our group members.

This is true. We did do some sight-seeing, but the sights to see in the tsunami-affected towns of Minamisanriku and Ishinomaki are not pretty. The debris has been cleared, but what remains is just mile after ...

Read part 1 >> 

Stood speechless at the sight of disaster areas: We will keep doing what we can 

Soon we will observe the third anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In the faraway land of America, the Nanka (Southern California) Miyagi Kenjinkai has been engaging in charity activities with their heart all going out to their hometown. While it’s not a big organization, with 100 family units, so far they have collected nearly $160,000—the achievement which no doubt owes much to the leadership of Yoshihito Yonezawa who has served as president for over twenty years.

Tanabata ...