My time in Fukushima was not quite over. On my way to Tokyo, I stopped in Koriyama City and met the Kimura Family. It felt like a miracle that I was able to meet them, and in many ways it was.
Dear to my heart and the “Japanese Family” of my friend Kristin, I had so many fond memories with the Kimuras. Nobuko Kimura is an artist, and they lived in a beautiful country house in Namie Town filled with her art and pottery. She and her husband have two sons who were in junior high school and elementary school when I lived in Japan, and who are now in their twenties. It was always a joy to visit the Kimuras, and the summer after I left Japan, Nobuko and her son Ryosuke also came to New Hampshire for a visit and stayed with my family.
Nobuko painting in 1999
Me, Ryosuke, Nobuko, Kristin and Seiya in 2002
They had lived in Namie Town, which was struck by the the unimaginable disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and radiation. After hearing the horrific news on March 11, my friend Kristin and I searched for information about them. It was agonizing to type their names in the Red Cross database… And nothing came up. Finally, we connected with a mutual friend about a week later, and he told us that he knew they were safe and had evacuated from Namie, but did not know where they were. We had no way of getting in touch with them, since the only contact information we had was their home address and phone number. When I arrived in Japan with only six days to spend in Fukushima, I didn’t think there was much chance of finding them. But thanks to Mr. Shimizu at the relocated Namie town office, I was finally able to connect with them, and we had planned this rendezvous in Koriyama.
This was no small feat, as the Kimura family was now spread across the region. Nobuko Kimura, her daughter-in-law Emi, and Nobuko’s two young grandchildren were now living in Inawashiro, west of Nihonmatsu in the central mountainous region of Fukushima Prefecture. It is a beautiful town with a famous lake, but has long and harsh winters, especially compared to the coastal town of Namie where the Kimuras had lived.
Inawashiro is by near the large lake in the center of this map.
Meanwhile, Nobuko’s husband Mr. Kimura was now living in Soma. He is a high school teacher and was reassigned to Soma after the high school where he worked was evacuated. He spends the work week in Soma and visits his wife and family in Inawashiro most weekends. It’s about a three-hour drive.
Nobuko’s older son Ryosuke (Emi’s husband and father of their two young children) is even farther away. He too was transferred by his job, south to Ibaraki Prefecture. He does not have a car and it takes him nearly six hours to travel to Inawashiro by train, so he only visits about once a month. His job is working in a nuclear power plant. He was working at the Daiichi plant in Fukushima until March.
Nobuko’s younger son, Seiya, is a college student in Tokyo. Nobuko was visiting him in March when disaster struck, and she stayed down there for a month before relocating with Emi and her grandchildren to Inawashiro. Seiya is still in Tokyo continuing his studies.
Mr. and Mrs. Kimura (Nobuko) with their granddaughter Aoba and grandson Kureha
I was elated to see Nobuko, Mr. Kimura, Emi, Ryosuke, toddler Aoba and baby Kureha at Koriyama Station. When I met Ryosuke in 1999, he was in junior high school, and it was hard to believe that he was now married with two children! I was so happy to meet the new additions to the family and we all laughed and smiled at this reunion after all these years.
Ryosuke and Emi
We had tea together in the station, but the kids were restless and we soon moved on to a Chinese restaurant where we had our own room and the kids had a little more space to move. There was so much to talk about and catch up on, it was hard to know where to begin. The conversation quickly turned to the events of March.
Emi and Ryosuke and the kids had been living with Nobuko and Mr. Kimura, as is traditional in Japan. When the major earthquake struck, Emi managed despite the shaking to run upstairs and pull baby Kureha from his crib where he was napping. She most likely saved his life, for few moments later, some of Nobuko’s sculptures fell from shelves into the crib.
Mr. Kimura was at school when the earthquake struck. He drove home to check on Emi and his grandchildren. He was not listening to the radio and did not have an emergency notification on his cell phone, so he had no idea that the tsunami was approaching. He planned to return to the high school immediately after checking on Emi and the kids, but for some reason he lingered at home. This probably saved his life, as the route back to his school was soon completely washed out by the waves of the tsunami. The house was fine.
Meanwhile, Ryosuke was at work at the Daiichi Plant. When the earthquake struck, he dove under a table. The shaking was so fierce and lasted so long that he soon ran outside. He said the view of the buildings and the whole world around him shaking was unbelievable. He stayed at the plant for about an hour after the earthquake, and then fled and did not return in the days that followed. He believes that this prevented any serious radiation exposure.
The Kimuras quickly evacuated their home, bringing only the bare essentials. Ryosuke and his father returned once afterwards and grabbed their computers, but the rest of the household possessions remain in the abandoned home and may remain there forever. It was hard to comprehend the gravity of this, that they will most likely never return to Namie.
(9/8/11 update - another brief return to evacuated areas was recently permitted: Japan disaster: Fukushima residents return to visit their homes)
I kept thinking of what always seemed to me to be an idyllic life that they led in their country home. I thought of all the beautiful pottery, years of work… I commented to Nobuko that it was so sad that she had to leave her pottery behind, but she wouldn’t allow me to dwell on the negatives. “I can still paint,” she said. In fact, she had brought two beautiful hand-painted fans and the homemade calendars she makes every year for me and Kristin. I was so touched.
At another point, I said it must be so hard to be separated from neighbors and friends – realizing that so many Namie lives were lost in the tsunami and that those who survived are now scattered across the region. “I have new friends now,” she said in her gentle voice. She says she enjoys playing kendo, her hobby for the past few years, in her new town. I mentioned it must be difficult for Mr. Kimura and Ryosuke to be stationed away from the rest of the family, and Nobuko reminded me that they were so lucky to both still have their jobs.
And slowly, we moved away from talk of the disasters and the struggle of adjusting to this new life. We talked about the children – Aoba, whose name means green leaf, and baby Kureba, whose name means brown leaf. Mr. Kimura wrote the kanji (Japanese characters) for me on a piece of paper. We called Seiya in Tokyo to say hello. And we exchanged stories and memories of times we spent together in the past.
And eventually, it was time to say goodbye again. I had a long journey ahead of me, back to Tokyo and then back to my life in the U.S. And they all had journeys of their own – back to Inawashiro, Soma, Ibaraki… and the long journey of living one day at a time..
