“I felt the ocean around me. The water was so cold it cooled me to the bone,” he recalls.
As the water reached his knees, Kurosawa saw people in cars grabbing the steering wheel while their vehicles were being washed on the road. Others clinging to the trees felled by the waves were swept away. For hours, Kurosawa endured sub-zero temperatures. He thought of his wife – he had reached her on her cell phone for 15 seconds while in the tree before the line died.
As the night turned into day, he heard someone in the distance calling for help with what appeared to be their last ounce of energy. He says he doesn’t know the person’s fate – but Kurosawa has just survived the deadliest natural disaster in Japanese history.
More than 20,000 people died or disappeared in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. But the devastation was deeper than the natural disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in this part of Japan has become a catastrophe of its own.
Ceremonies will be held this year to mark the tenth anniversary of the disaster weak and socially distanced against the background of the coronavirus pandemic. In Tokyo, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will attend a memorial, stopping for a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m., the exact time of the earthquake 10 years ago.
Despite the destruction, many survivors have rebuilt their lives and communities, but for many the legacy of the disaster will remain forever.
The power of a tsunami
The tsunami destroyed more than 50,000 houses and buildings in Ishinomaki alone, destroying a vibrant city center and most of its port and infrastructure. Nearly 3,100 people in the city lost their lives.
Kurosawa, a plumber, worked in a neighboring town 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from his hometown when the earthquake occurred. He called his wife, who was sheltering in a bank, and told her to meet him at home.
A few minutes later, a tsunami warning was issued. He tried to call his wife again, but the phone lines were dead. Worried for her safety, Kurosawa jumped into his car and hurried home to meet her so that they could head to a higher ground together. The cars passed in the opposite direction, heading towards the evacuation areas established in the country prone to earthquakes.
As he approached the house, he saw in the distance what appeared to be tsunami barriers. As he approached, he realized that they were cars – swept by the waves, moving up and down.
As he made a desperate return, he spotted a man trying to escape the water he had received. on foot. “We pulled him into the car through the window and quickly got away from the water. But until then, the tsunami was in front of us,” says Kurosawa.
Soon scattered by the waves, the couple abandoned the car and ran to find shelter.
As Kurosawa climbed the tree, a branch broke and fell to the embankment. Kurosawa rose back into the tree just as the waves came in. The man he saved did the same. “I almost thought I wouldn’t make it,” he says.
“It’s hard to imagine the power of a tsunami if you haven’t experienced it – it’s a destructive force that just swallows everything and destroys everything in its path.”
Nuclear disaster
As the tsunami headed inland to neighboring Fukushima Prefecture, the Daiichi nuclear power plant was melting.
In the months and years that followed, parts of the area around Fukushima became ghost towns, visited only by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) officials, safety inspectors and tourists looking for a dark thrill. Since the disaster, TEPCO has pumped hundreds of tons of water into the nuclear power plant to cool the reactors and stop the flow of radiation.
Disaster cleanup is expected to take decades and cost billions of dollars. More than 35,000 people remain displaced, 10 years after the initial melting, according to Fukushima authorities.
Hajime Matsukubo, a spokesman for the Tokyo Nuclear Information Center for Citizens, an anti-nuclear public interest organization, says the areas affected by the quake and tsunami have largely recovered. However, recovery work around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has stalled since the meltdown, as despite the large amount of money spent, the population in the area has halved since 2010. “After 10 years, what I learned is that once a nuclear accident occurs, cleaning up is extremely difficult, “he said.
As of March 2020, only 2.4% of the prefecture remains closed to residents, even parts of that area being accessible for short visits, according to Japan’s Ministry of Environment.
However, despite decontamination efforts, a 2020 survey by Kwansei Gakuin University found that 65% of evacuees no longer wanted to return to Fukushima prefecture – 46% said they feared residual environmental pollution and 45 % he said they settled elsewhere.
It ended on May 5, 2012, when the country’s last operating reactor at Hokkaido was shut down for inspection, leaving Japan without nuclear power for the first time in more than 45 years. (Two units of the Oi nuclear power plant were briefly restarted in 2012, but went offline again a year later.)
The passing of time
On the morning of May 12, Kurosawa came out of the pine. It looked like a bomb had destroyed his city.
As he made his way home, he scoured the wreckage, avoiding parts of the wrecked boats that had washed ashore. The half-collapsed buildings were submerged in water, and he struggled to breathe the smoke-laden air.
Kurosawa’s wife was alive, being evacuated to a school on a higher ground. But overnight they lost their friends and the physical markers that made up their lives.
For the next six months, Kurosawa and his wife lived in rented houses and their friends’ offices. In August 2011, they moved into temporary housing in the event of a disaster, a prefabricated building they had named home for more than three years. Kurosawa used her sanitation skills to volunteer to help her local community with weird jobs. He still lives in Ishinomaki.
“We went from a normal routine to an abnormal one that became the new norm. It’s been a year, two years – the abnormal reality has returned to normal,” says Kurosawa. For five years, he dreamed at night of dreaming through the remnants of his hometown.
Today in Ishinomaki, Kurosawa says people’s feelings about nuclear power in the region remain as mixed as everyone’s experience of the tenth anniversary of the disaster.
“People ask me how I feel now that 10 years have passed. I still feel like I’m living on that extended chronology and I’m trying my best,” he says.
Over the years, Kurosawa has struggled to rebuild his life, business and community. Today, coastal embankments almost 10 meters high stretch for about 56 kilometers along the coast to protect their city from the ocean. The new public residences have appeared on the outskirts of the city, while others are still under reconstruction.
Kurosawa says that people’s emotional scars take as long to heal as their built environment. But, he says, there is no point in living in the past. Today, Kurosawa plays an active role in teaching others about disaster preparedness and continues to move forward.
“One thing I’ve learned from this disaster is that people have to live with each other. I think the hope is in us,” he says.
Sometimes he passes the tree that saved his life. He even tried to recharge it once.
CNN’s James Griffiths, Angus Watson and Chie Kobayashi contributed to this report from Hong Kong and Tokyo