A FEW days after Japan's earthquake and tsunami obliterated cities along its north-eastern coast, I met Hiromaru Sasazaki and his wife Noko at the Ofunto hospital. Readers might recall him from the online essay "Picking up the pieces". He told a remarkable story of survival. The tsunami tore off his top-floor apartment from the building; his leg was trapped in broken floorboards; he eventually swam and crawled to safety.
Last week I saw him for the first time since that moving interview. He and Noko were in Tokyo before boarding a plane to start a new chapter of their life in Canada. Often in journalism we have rich interactio
ns with people and then simply disappear, off to chase the next headline. It creates an acute kind of institutional amnesia. Seeing Hiromaru and Noko again gave me a opportunity to measure my psychological distance from the tragedy of March 11th and to consider how much Japan has progressed, and has (or has not) changed.
Hiromaru had e-mailed me for the first time the week before last, when he was headed to Tokyo. The article, he said, had meant a lot to him. It was spotted by friends in America, who sent it around to others. It was, he says, the way in which their family and friends learned that they were alive.
After our meeting in hospital, he went into surgery. Then recuperation, then physical rehabilitation, and then a series of temporary residences. For the past two months, Hiromaru and Noko were housed with 200 evacuees in a hotel in Morioka, the capital of Iwate prefecture. "It was very calm and relaxed—like paradise for us," he says. "We didn't need to queue for food, and could bathe whenever we liked," he said. "All hot meals," Noko added gingerly, testing her English. "We were like a family," he says about life among the evacuees. The government paid the bill.
The other evacuees came from Kamaishi, a town near theirs—Rikuzentakata—which was also washed away. All needed to move out by June 30th, when the temporary housing expired. "Only a few will go back to Kamaishi," he says. "They have no jobs there, they don't want to go back." Where will they go? "Nearly all the people prefer to live in Morioka because it is easier to get jobs and start their lives again." In Kamaishi, he says, there's nothing. No shops, no homes, no work. "It is very hard to live."
And Hiromaru and Noko? "We don't want to go back," he says. It will take ten years to rebuild Rikuzentakata. Instead of reviving Hiromaru’s fishing-tackle shop, they have other plans. "I want to learn English to get a new job," he explains. His English is good but not fluent, and he speaks some Spanish too. Hiromaru's goal is to work as a tour guide or translator.
But probably not in Japan. Many countries have agreed to take in survivors on a temporary basis. Hiromaru and Noko were enticed by Vancouver. The Canadian College of English Language offered to fly them over, house them and cover tuition for a three-month stay. "It is very wonderful for us to start a new life in another country as a student," says Hiromaru. Noko smiles and nods.
After the three months? "We have no plans; we've not decided—intentionally." Both in their early 40s, they say they will let chance lead them wherever they go next, and look forward to the surprise. Both their families respect their decision to leave Japan. "We don't feel anything sad, just excited," Hiromaru says.
As he speaks, I notice a large scar bordered by stitches on his right knee, a reminder of the day that changed everything. Fate tore apart this couple’s world and that of those around them. They seem to have adapted to its randomness by harnessing it as a force to lead them away from the familiar; they are using the fact that everything they knew was destroyed to begin again. It is mainly the elderly, he explains, who are returning to places like Kamaishi or Rikuzentakata. Younger people, like Hiromaru and Noko, are using the moment to start anew.
from The Economist
