Dan Emmons blogs on our work in Kesennuma, Japan

Konno-San’s daughter, Motojiro, met us as we arrived to start the reconstruction work on her parent’s home. The house is perched on the side of a hill and juts up over 30 feet above the valley below. But it was not high enough to keep it out of reach of the great tsunami wave of March 11, 2011.

Her parents had escaped to higher ground, but their home was flooded. From their front yard, there is now a beautiful full view of the ocean. But Motojiro told us that before the tsunami you could not see the ocean from their house because of all the buildings along the coastal highway in the valley below.

Motojiro insisted on helping the Samaritan's Purse team work on the home. She kept herself busy installing the floor and wall insulation, keeping the floors clean, and making sure that there was hot water available for us at tea time. It was during one of those tea times that she shared her story about the tsunami.

Motojiro and her husband were at work in Kesennuma when the earthquake shook the area violently. She and her husband worked in a fish canning factory along the bay. When the wave came, they went with other workers, over a hundred of them, to the top floor of the factory.

They huddled together as the waves crashed through the factory floors below them, but the water did not reach the top floor. They were trapped there that evening, and though they were relieved to have escaped being swept away by the rushing sea waters, they soon faced an even scarier night together as the waters burst into flames all around them.

The wave had toppled the big petroleum tanks that held gasoline and diesel fuel for the shipping and fishing industry, and the floodwaters had now become a towering inferno of flames. In the darkness of the night, the workers trapped in the factory would look on in horror as the flames on the water would surge toward them carried along by the fuel soaked waves.

Each time as the flames would come close, the screaming workers’ tears would turn to relief as the wave changed directions and pull the flames away from their safe haven. The terrifying night eventually gave way to the dawn, and the workers were rescued.

A week later, Motojiro was able to reach her parents home to discover that it had been flooded. She could not find her parents, but a neighbor directed her to a school up the highway that had been turned into a shelter for those whose homes had been destroyed.

She found her parents at the shelter. Nine months have passed since those hard days and nights. Since the canning factory closed, Motojiro’s husband had to travel to another city far away to find work.

Homes and factories will eventually be rebuilt, and time will dull the pain of those terrible days and nights of the tsunami. Working on Motojiro’s parent’s home and telling her story is just another step in that long journey of healing.

Samaritan's Purse , Japan , Community Development , The Journey of Healing

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