絆：ニッケイ・ストーリー ～東日本大震災から～

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This is a recreation of my personal experiences from the e-mails that I sent to friends in Canada and Japan, TV news reports in Canada, the U.S., and Japan, and from what my wife Akiko told me.

Continuation of Tomo’s email from March 15:

Back to Sendai

Life here: …shortage everything. But we have so much more than tens of thousands of others. We took turns standing in line at the local food store for two hours. Petrol for the car—none. Kerosene—I basically hounded a guy to sell me about 6 liters to ...

Read Part 2 >>

This is a recreation of my personal experiences from the e-mails that I sent to friends in Canada and Japan, TV news reports in Canada, the U.S., and Japan, and from what my wife Akiko told me.

Tuesday, March 15

hi guys we R ok no hydro/denki some toyu and some food no gas bad connection here no internet, borrowing a computer at a school. Want to know more about the nuke. Senji…Astuko and Hikari OK ???

see you Tomo

***

Hey Tomo, Judith told us that you are OK. Senji and family are in an ...

Read Part 1 >>

I will try to recreate my personal experiences from the e-mails that I sent to friends in Canada and Japan, TV news reports in Canada, the U.S., and Japan, and from what my wife Akiko tells me.

Saturday, March 12

We woke up exhausted from worry about family and friends in Sendai. Still no contact.

***

I got mail from Judith, the sister of my pal Tomo. She was frantic about his whereabouts:

Another message from Marnie from Australia, an old girlfriend of Senji, a good friend who lives in Sendai. The message is the same: “is ...

I know the title of this post is “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” but it’s been really hard to find anything good about the disaster unfolding in Japan. Truth is, words seem so trivial and I don’t even particularly feel like writing about the quake, or the tsunami or the nuclear crisis that’s changing by the hour. And you know I don’t do sentimental or sad very well—I prefer to keep those thoughts bottled up inside and express them by yelling at the cat or slamming doors like normal people do. But so many ...

I returned home from Japan last night and wanted to share a few thoughts, a few behind-the-scene moments and a link to a way you can help the Japanese people.

This assignment began a week ago Thursday night when the magnitude 9 earthquake hit. Morning News Executive Producer Tim Scowden called me at home to wake me and let me know we'd be going on early--at 4AM. He also knows that as an American with a Japanese mother, I have friends and family in Japan and that I'm involved in the Japanese American community here in the States ...