Why am I only left?
Gepubliceerd op 23 maart 2011
Uit de Asahi Shimbun, de grote Japanse krant, een tekenend artikel van YASUNORI SAKAMOTO; STAFF WRITER:Just minutes after the mega-earthquake struck northeastern Japan on March 11, Masakazu Sasaki was on the rooftop of the town hall where he worked. Sasaki, 38, was taking photographs of a horrifying scene: a massive tsunami that swept away everything in its path.
As a town hall official in charge of public relations and communications, Sasaki had the task of making a record of the damage to local communities caused by the disaster. The tremendous destructive force of the tsunami left the fishing town of about 20,000 people in ruins. As he was looking at the harrowing scene through the viewfinder, Sasaki was overwhelmed by concern about his wife Megumi and two young daughters, who were visiting his in-laws at the time. He kept praying that they had escaped the wall of waves by heading to a nearby mountain for safety.
The municipal government wasted no time establishing an emergency headquarters to deal with the aftermath of the disaster. It was Sasaki’s responsibility to trudge around town to collect information.
Grim reports of the devastation caused by the quake and tsunami kept coming in from the town’s fire department. Sasaki stayed in the town hall until March 13. Sasaki tried to convince himself that his loved ones were alive. But he couldn’t sleep as he imagined the ordeal the three must be facing amid the biting cold and a lack of food.
On March 14, Megumi’s 62-year-old father, Junichi Hanasaka, arrived at the town hall. On seeing his father-in-law, Sasaki felt relieved: He assumed the visit meant his family was alive. He was thunderstruck when Hanasaka said simply: “They were all swept away.” Sasaki’s wife and daughters—Niina, 3, and 4-month-old Kokona—were at Hanasaka’s house when the quake hit. Hanasaka was away from home. His wife Atsuko, 60, Megumi and her two daughters rushed out of the house toward high ground. Just as they were about to reach an elevated area, the four were washed away by the waves.
On the morning of March 13, Megumi was found lying on her back on a heap of rubble just dozens of meters from her own home. Kokona was still strapped to her back. On the morning of March 17, Niina was found several meters away. While Hanasaka was searching for his wife, daughter and grandchildren, he spotted socks Niina had liked poking out from the rubble. When he pulled the socks, small legs emerged.
On the Sunday five days before the quake, the Sasakis went shopping at a department store in Morioka.
For Niina, who was looking forward to starting kindergarten in April, the family bought clothes for her entrance ceremony as well as a handkerchief and a cup. Niina took great delight in trying out her new shoes, also bought that day, as she was not sure whether she was wearing them correctly. She had a habit of putting the right shoe on her left foot and vice versa, gushing happily, “I guess this is alright.”
Sasaki’s request to be relieved from his assignment to the emergency headquarters was accepted by his superior after he explained the tragedy that befell his family. He knew full well he could not vanquish the demons that now haunted him. Sasaki was consumed by guilt along with feelings of emptiness, frustration, sorrow and desolation. The tsunami stripped him of everything that was important to him. He sought answers to questions that nobody should ever have to ask themselves.
“Why did it have to take the lives of two small girls with their futures before them? Why did I alone survive?” Sasaki couldn’t find meaning to his life any more and he seriously contemplated ending it.
But it was his mother’s comforting words that stopped him from doing so.
“You have a mission to protect the spirits of your three loved ones,” she told her son.
She said they would become hungry and thirsty and that it was his duty to continue to take care of them.
At 4:30 p.m. on March 20, a coffin containing the three bodies was pushed slowly into an incinerator for cremation. That morning, Junichi Hanasaka found the body of his wife near his house.
"You will all go to heaven together. Grandma will follow soon," Hanasaka said to the three, whose ashes were placed in the same box.
Sasaki said to the three: "I will protect you all for the rest of my life."
'Why am I only left?' asks survivor who lost loved ones BY YASUNORI SAKAMOTO STAFF WRITER