3/11
This is my recalling of how the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake unfolded as a child, aided with interviews of family members.
Part 1: Quakes of Terror
March 11th, 2011. Friday. An ordinary school day. An ordinary afternoon. I was in the 2nd grade, 7 years old when it happened. I distinctly remember sitting in the classroom, celebrating a classmate’s star of the week and another classmate’s birthday, happily eating the snacks on my desk when my friend suddenly pointed to a tree outside the window.
“Look! The tree is shaking!”
We all looked out to where she pointed. It was a massive tree with leaves sprawling outwards, and the trunk itself was shaking. The ground started to shift horizontally before us. At that exact moment, the screeching sound of the alarm went off, filling me with panic. Instinctively, we all dove under tables taking cover as we had practised numerous times by now.
This wasn’t a drill. This was real.
What started off as small intensified at once, becoming terrifyingly violent. The ground was no longer shaking at an intensity I was familiar with. Our snacks fell to the floor. I heard the sounds of books sliding off shelves and the legs of the chairs and tables clattering against the ground. Nobody spoke as we clung onto the cold steel of the table legs with wide eyes, praying for it to be over. The shaking subsided eventually, but we waited with bated breath.
Was this the end? Or was it going to get worse?
Our teacher yelled for us to stay calm and stay under the tables until there was an announcement, so we stayed put. I waited with my heart in my throat, not fully understanding what was happening.
Looking back, the quakes must have lasted for at least a few minutes, the longest I had ever been under the table for. None of my classmates spoke, nor did my teacher. We were rendered speechless. My knees and neck hurt from sitting on the floor and being bent under the table for so long.
The announcement came two minutes later when it was clear there would be no immediate aftershocks. The voice of the head of the school boomed from the intercom through the classroom.
“All students remain calm and proceed in a single file to evacuate to the tennis grounds.”
As soon as her voice cut off, our teacher told us to put on our helmets and quickly line up. We didn’t need to be told twice, grabbing the helmets from the black nets under the wooden chairs and clasping them over our heads. The usually uncomfortable feeling of my hair being stuck within the helmet and the strap rubbing against my skin seemed to fade away into the background. I followed the backs of my classmates in a single file, quietly exiting the classroom wondering what was going to happen now.
Part 2: Full School Evacuation
The maroon and green tennis grounds were filled with students from all grade levels from first to twelfth and even the kindergarteners. We were all seated in alphabetical order in our classes. A total of at least 500 students and 100 staff were on the grounds. The white lines outlining the courts couldn’t be fully seen anymore. The teachers were standing with their helmets at the front of the lines with emergency backpacks and notepads in hand. I was at the back of the line since my surname started with a ‘t’ for class 2B. The head of the school picked up a megaphone and announced that everyone had been safely evacuated. Then we waited.
An unknown amount of time passed by in murky colours, however at some point, the head of the school was holding a megaphone again. She announced that we were going to go back inside as no aftershocks had occurred since. The students and teachers exited grade by grade, class by class, until it was our turn.
I stood up, feeling relieved and overjoyed that we could finally go back inside. The numbing pain from sitting down for so long slowly eased as I walked in line behind my classmates. We passed by the gymnasium into the cafeteria and got to the corridors, nearly to our classroom, when the ground started to shake. Instinctively, we dropped to the floor and plastered ourselves to the walls, our small bodies trying to hold on. There was nothing nearby that we could take cover under. I only closed my eyes and prayed for it to be over. Fortunately, the shaking stopped within a minute. It was no longer safe to be inside, so our teacher led us back to the tennis grounds and once again we were all sat in the same lines as before.
At least an hour passed by and it started to rain, however the school was prepared. The teachers and staff pulled out a blue waterproof tarpaulin and inflated it like a balloon around us. Just like we practised in P.E class, we dove into the pocket of air and sat down on the edges of the tarpaulin. Inside the safety of our shelter, we ate our emergency snacks and drinks from the little bags our mothers had prepared for us every start of the school year. I had never thought I would actually be eating it, let alone in this balloon.
Eventually, the rain stopped, and we got out of our balloons. The head of the school picked up the megaphone again, however this time to make the announcement that all after school activities were cancelled for the day and that phone calls would be made to our parents now. They would be coming to pick us up as soon as they could.
The evacuation was over, but school was cancelled for at least a week.
Part 3: Domino Effect
The next 24 hours were filled with utmost tension. My mother was in the clothes store shopping for the kid of my aunt’s friend. She had come to visit us at this time from India and was with my 3 years old brother, who had been asleep in the car when the earthquake struck. The racks had started shaking, clothes fell off the shelves, and the cars outside were violently moving from side to side. Alarmed, my mother had frantically run into the parking lot and grabbed my brother, fortunately, before anything else happened. They ran back inside the shop.
“The earthquake had started out small, and I remember feeling excited because it was my first time experiencing one. I didn’t panic. We had just gone to the amusement park and rode roller coasters the previous day, so I was still feeling the thrill from them. But when I looked around, everyone’s faces were tense. I was the only one with a smile on my face,” said my aunt, 13 years later as I interviewed her.
She hadn’t realized what was actually happening at that time. The shopkeeper had told them not to go by the bridge, near the seaside, however we had no way of getting back home other than by crossing the bridge. After waiting for some time in the store, it was deemed safe enough to go back so they did.
On their way home, they received a call from school to pick me up and rushed to get there. By the time they arrived, most parents had picked up their kids, however I refused to go back home. I felt that school was safer with all the teachers. It took some convincing before I agreed to go back home, however even then my mother wasn’t sure it was safe for us to go inside. She had heard from my friend’s mother that the glass inside their house had broken and was worried if the same had happened inside our house, so she went inside to check first. Fortunately, only a photo frame had fallen and made a dent in the floor.
At this point, only Wifi was working. My father told us that all the trains were stopped and that he had to walk home, however his office was 15 km away. It would then take him 4 hours to walk. By the time he arrived, it was late evening. We were all so relieved.
“I was amazed by how orderly people were moving. They walked calmly in lines and even waited at signals. If people were in the middle of buying something, they would put it back. Even though the trains had stopped, the buses were still working and there were long queues for them. There was no panic or chaos. The cell phone networks weren’t working however somehow Wifi was. People were walking slowly, looking at their phones trying to contact their loved ones. I put a message on Facebook to let friends and family know that there had been a large earthquake and that we were okay. I was walking along Komazawa dori (street), and the further I was walking away from Otemachi, the crowds were gradually dispersing,” said my father, 13 years later as I interviewed him.
There were a series of serious aftershocks as I watched the lights in our living room and kitchen sway violently. I dove under the table, frightened to tears, whilst the rest of my family continued anxiously watching the news to see what to do. The blaring earthquake alerts flashed on screen, and I kept telling them to come under the table to protect their heads. It was what I learnt in school.
My family and I watched the black 40 metre high tsunami wipe out complete cities, destroying infrastructure and thousands of people’s homes through TV. The most terrifying part being what followed with the tsunami destroying the barriers around the nuclear reactors in Fukushima and the resulting explosion and toxic radiation. I remember feeling petrified as I realized how enormous and cruel the sea could be. I was so lucky to be living in Tokyo, nowhere near the east coast of Tohoku. Just watching it all unfold on screen was enough.
Part 4: Rumours like Wildfire
In the following weeks, rumours spread uncontrollably. There was a shortage of water and food supply as the majority of it came from the Tohoku region. People thought the water was getting contaminated by the radiation. That the radiation was going to affect the atmosphere. That the winds were carrying the radiation all the way to Tokyo. Whether all of this was true or not, it was hard to tell at that time. We weren’t sure what was rumour or fact. Everyone was panicking and fear was being instigated in the masses through the rumours. Foreigners around us and friends who weren’t citizens were ready to jump on the fastest plane back home. Many of them ended up running away, however my mother and father were conflicted. We had a home here, a life we had built from scratch for more than 5 years. We didn’t want to just leave, so we stayed for another two weeks.
However, the rumours were getting worse. At the office, my father’s Japanese colleagues who had no choice but to stay in Japan were asking him why we were staying here when we had another home in India and were telling him we should leave. However, my mother still didn’t want to leave.
What if we never came back?
My mother wanted to stay and stick it through. My father on the other hand wanted to leave for the kids and play it safe. He didn’t know what would happen, and if anything happened to his kids, he would be blamed. He was trying to take responsibility for his family. Their differing opinions on what to do caused a big fight between them, however after lots of debating, my mother eventually gave in. We decided to follow the herd and leave.
There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Hyderabad nor Delhi, so along with my father’s friend, we had to take a shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka and then a flight from Osaka to Mumbai. We stayed there for several days before taking a connecting flight to Hyderabad. The tickets were expensive, however my parents were willing to pay for it as well as for my aunt. Even during the journey, I was crying, wanting to go back to school where I felt safer. My 3-year old brother was also sick with high fever, diarrhoea, and was vomiting at this time. Despite being away from danger, it was still a tense and agonising period where my parents couldn’t sleep well at night.
We ended up staying in India for 6 weeks, however my father had come back after only 2 weeks because of work.
“We stayed in Japan for so many years, enjoyed all the good things about Japan and when the country was in a bad situation, we were just running away. I felt guilty for leaving. And we only just moved to a new house, and there were repairs going on, so I didn’t want to leave the house. What if we never came back again? We didn’t know the situation. These kinds of fears were in my mind. Your father had also said he would come back 2 weeks later, but what if something happened? I wanted to stay together as a family. During the whole time I was in India, I wasn’t happy. I was ready to stay in Japan even after the earthquake like the others,” said my mother 13 years later as I interviewed her.
While my mother felt like she was abandoning her country and home, my father viewed us leaving as only temporary and that we would come back once things settled.
“The question was whether you wanted to be foolishly brave or smart about it because we were going to come back. I was thinking about the kids, my family. If something happened and my family was affected by it during those 2 weeks we were there, I would never forgive myself about it,” said my father.
At last when radiation levels came back down and we felt it was safe enough, my mother, brother, and I returned to Japan. It was now mid-May.
Part 5: The Aftermath
Life was no longer the same. It was now about what we buy. Most of the food we usually bought before, like dairy products, fruits, and vegetables, came from the Tohoku region, where the nuclear radiation had spread to. Nobody wanted to buy food from these northern areas anymore in fear of the contamination. We avoided buying them for at least a year, however, in turn, the prices for food from the other regions shot up significantly, such as Hokkaido milk or eggs from the Northern regions. We also stopped drinking tap water and had made the switch to mineral water during that time period, only going back to tap water 2 to 3 years later. We were careful about what fish we bought because the rumour was that the contaminated water had been thrown into the ocean.
However, it is only in 2023, 12 years later, that the government of Japan has started to release the contaminated water from the nuclear plants into the ocean, after claiming the radiation levels to be low and receiving approval about it. As a result of the earthquake, many family friends, classmates, teachers, especially those who were not citizens, left Japan permanently and never came back. International schools suffered significant losses — classrooms were empty, and it took a while for international students to come back again.
13 years later, and the trauma and terror from 3/11 is still etched into my memory. It will remain with me until the end of my time.
