カナダ掲示板 (フリー) - No.22259

Thank you very much for your warm comment. I am sure people are so grateful that they have lots of support from all over the world. I believe just thinking about it sends a strong power there. I believe people's prayer will reach there. I never thought about wearing Japanese flag with me but I will do that when I go to work. It is a nice way to show your support and respect for Japan.

I deeply appreciate how people are thinking about my country. I am getting so many emails from my colligues, friends, students asking about my family, friends or people in general in Japan. I am in tears everytime I receive warm message. I am from Kansai area. Lots of people died in Kobe too. I feel so far away from my home and useless but you gave me a lot of courage to think positively.

Thank you very much!

thank you Rob.
that is a great idea, I am going to go home and find a white t-shirt and design my own "gambare Japan t-shirt" :D
hope to see more people wearing "hi no maru" t-shirts and support Japan.

sorry, this is outside of this thread being related in a broader sense.
I thought it gives good ideas of the survivors' accounts.

Excerpt:

TAGAJO, Japan - Masashi Imai wrapped his arms around the wheelchair that held his disabled wife and clung on with all his strength.

Their home lurched and swayed as the ground fell away. The power went out. Imai switched on his wire radio and heard the warning.

Then came the deluge.

Imai picked up his wife's limp body, cradled it and carried her to the second floor. "Father! Father!" screamed a girl from a neighbouring house. Imai's wife, who has mental problems after two strokes, began to laugh.

Many of Imai's neighbours had nowhere to run, because their houses had only one story. Eventually, the girl's voice went silent.

In the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, the line between life and death proved very thin — just one story high, in Imai's case, or little more than a bus length away from a wall of water. Even along the killing zone of the northeastern coast, some buildings and entire neighbourhoods were spared while others were obliterated. The death toll was feared to be higher than 10,000.

On that fateful Friday, Ayumi Osuga was practicing origami with her three children, aged 2 to 6, in their single-story home in the coastal city of Sendai. At 2:46 p.m., the ground started to shake. Cups and plates fell from cupboards and shattered, but the damage seemed minor.

Then Osuga's husband called. "Get out of there now!" he yelled.

Chilled by the brusque warning, the 24-year-old factory worker quickly gathered her children into the car and fled to a hilltop home belonging to her husband's family 12 miles (20 kilometres) away. She managed to beat waves moving at the speed of a jumbo jet.

Safe on higher ground, Osuga's family spent the night listening to the radio. The darkness was lit only by candles, and the cold was bitter; some snow still lay on the hills around.

On Sunday, she returned with her husband and relatives to a home that was no more. Among the only things that had survived were three large packs of diapers. Tears in her eyes, Osuga stuffed the diapers, along with ruined bank documents and family photos, into backpacks.

Osuga was hoping the neighbourhood had been spared any deaths. But just then, a team of firefighters with wooden picks appeared. One of them yelled out: "a corpse." Inside a house about 15 yards (meters) away, they found the body of a grey-haired woman lying under a blanket.

A few minutes later, the firefighters spotted another: It was Osuga's neighbour. Wearing a black fleece and black pants, he lay crumpled in a partial fetal position, hugging some cardboard debris, at the bottom of a muddy wooden stairwell inside his home.

The top of the house appeared almost mockingly untouched — with just two cracks in the white wall, and a small satellite dish still dotting the blue tiled roof.

Osuga knows she is lucky to be alive. "My family, my children ... I have come to realize what is important in life," she said.

As Osuga was playing with her children, Hisae Watanabe was examining watches on the second floor of the Loft department store in Sendai. She had come to Sendai for the day from Fukushima, one of hardest-hit cities, on business.

When the earthquake hit, everyone fell down. The glass in the watch cases shattered. The panic rose in Watanabe. Large pipes in the department store's ceiling began to come loose, swaying and banging into each other.

The staff was calm, used to earthquakes. They told everyone to run outside despite the danger of falling debris.

Watanabe ran out onto a walkway over the road. For some reason, there was a giant statue of the letter "P," poised at a funny angle. Everyone took pictures with their mobile phone cameras.

Then the walkway started swaying badly, and they ran down into the street. People screamed in the chaos. Watanabe spent the rest of the day trying to find shelter, and ended up passing a cold, hungry night at a railway station. She was waiting to return home when the trains started running again.

As she talked, the petite, 30-year-old woman sat alone on a cardboard sheet in Sendai's city hall, crowded with refugees who have nowhere else to go. She appeared haggard and shell-shocked.

Like Osuga, construction worker Yukou Ito was lucky enough to reach higher ground — barely.

Ito was at work about 40 minutes from his home near the harbour in Hachinohe when the earthquake struck. He returned in time to see a wall of rising water, which funneled cars and boats down the street toward him.

"It was terrifying. ... It looked like a foreign movie where everyone's running from something scary," he said.

Ito grabbed a credit card and jumped into his compact car. Through his rearview mirror, he could see the huge tsunami crashing down the street just behind him. A fishing boat was right behind him.

Now, several inches (centimetres) of water cover the floor at the entrance of his apartment, along with his ruined refrigerator, his microwave and a cabinet. A pile of muddy clothes soak in a large plastic bucket filled with water.

"I have to start over from square one," he says, lighting a cigarette and looking at the men in hard hats dragging debris and twisted metal out of buildings. Huge fishing boats were turned on their sides in the road like children's toys. "I've got absolutely nothing left."

Still overcome by emotion, Imai paces back and forth along the Sunaoshi river that runs through his small hometown of Tagajo, his knee-high wading boots scraping along the ground. Other dazed survivors roam the devastated streets.

As Imai remembers his older neighbours who likely died in their houses, he breaks into tears.

"This river has given us so much, but on Friday it brought disaster," said the 56-year-old, a former hotel worker who quit his job to care for his wife of 33 years. "Even now, when I sit or close my eyes, I still feel like it is shaking."

As he talked, the river's current switched directions and suddenly dropped several feet (a meter) — signs of another possible tsunami. A few minutes later came a small wave about a foot (30 centimetres), carrying oddly shaped debris.

It spun and dipped as it slowly floated by.

___

Associated Press writer Foster Klug contributed to this report from Hachinohe.

God, what is this all about?
I believe in Reincarnation.
I believe in Compassiion.

Thank you for posting these news clips.It is so depressing to read all these words. It is always sad to see people suffer. I was in tears reading them.

But I just saw a news clip on YouTube that old man was rescued after 48 hours being stuck in his house with two other old women. The reporter put the microphone in front of him. He smiled and said"I have experienced Chile Tsunami. Everything will be OK. We can rebuild the town! Let's do it"

I cried...someone wrote a comment saying that he is already looking into the future! Amazing! We will follow you!!"

Because it is a horrible time, we all have to tune to a positive wave. Especially people who have energy and ability to do so. True, I have been so depressed for several days. I can't even talk to my husband and my children. But I think I really have to pull myself together and start doing whatever I can do. Small prayer is good to start. It will reach to people there.

I will send all my love to Japan and people there! I don't care if it sounds cheap but I will do so!

Rob, thank you so much your thought! I just write a message on Keijiban(comments) to see if anyone interested in to gether somewhere to pray for Japan. I watched Japanese news and people who is suffering from a disaster appriciate to hear encouragements. I'm really frustrated about nothing I have done for them. And I see that many people here in Toronto want to do something!! If donation process takes time meanwhile at least we can pray for them. I'm not sure what people think about this, but I'm hoping that somehow many people will connect and pray. If you think this is a good idea please write me back. Sorry for my terrible English.