Remembering Japan

It was just before midnight on March 11, ten weeks ago today, that a 9.0 earthquake grabbed hold of northeast Japan and shook it. The resulting tsunami and damage to a nuclear plant caused such devastation that even now it's still hard to wrap my mind around it.

Thanks to an in-house presentation this week by two of our stellar journalists at The Oregonian, I have a better understanding. Reporter Rich Read, who lived for six years in Tokyo as the newspaper's correspondent, and photographer Motoya Nakamura, who grew up in Japan, spent two weeks in the devastated region earlier this month and on Wednesday they reflected on their experiences in-country.

Their comments were captured in this hour-long video and address both the logistical challenges of traveling and reporting, as well as the powerful aftershocks that kept people on edge. The first few minutes of video and still photography are gut-wrenching in terms of conveying the scope of the triple disaster: Seeing mile after mile after mile after mile of devastation is numbing. Piles of lumber, metal and other materials were whipped into so many haystacks of destruction.

Then there were the psychological aspects of the loss.

For Motoya, it was emotionally difficult, returning to his homeland three weeks after the disaster. Pulling strangers' mud-caked photos from the debris, he said, made him think of his own heritage and experiences growing up in Japan, as well as his own two boys, ages 7 and 10, here in Portland.

For Rich, it was eerie flying into Tokyo, a bustling megalopolis of 28 million people far from the damaged region, and seeing the darkened, quiet streets. And it was sobering, he said, to realize it took an event like this to provide rarely seen glimpses of humanity among the Japanese.

He told the story of an woman in her 70s who was so overjoyed at finding her daughter alive in a shelter that they actually embraced.

"I will always remember that hug," she said.
"Why?" Rich asked her.
"Because," she said, "that only happens in movies."

If you can imagine such a reserved society where family members don't hug each other, then you can imagine the emotions unleashed by the tragedy. "It was like 9/11," Rich said, "with people feeling they were in it together."


It sounds trite, but I can't help but admire the resilience, the resourcefulness and the genuine selflessness we've seen as the Japanese struggle to recover. Thanks to Rich and Motoya and other journalists who've reported this ongoing story, my admiration just spiked.