It will soon be seven years since the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Mainly along the coastal areas of the Tohoku region, seriously damaged by the quake-triggered tsunami, work continues to preserve the remains of disaster-damaged structures and establish parks representing prayers for reconstruction. Passing on the memories of the earthquake should be steadily promoted.
Classes for Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, a facility where 84 people, including schoolchildren, teachers and other staff fell victim to the tsunami, have been held in a makeshift building on the premises of another elementary school. At the end of this month, Okawa Elementary will be integrated into the other school, and will be shut down.
It has been decided that the tsunami-damaged former building of Okawa Elementary will be preserved. There were more than a few people who called for removal of the building, saying they didn't want to look at something so painful. However, the Ishinomaki city government decided to maintain it, as it also took into account the desire of graduates of the school and some bereaved families who called for the building to be preserved.
Tetsuya Tadano, 18, who was a fifth-grader at the school when the quake occurred and was miraculously saved, also appealed for the preservation of the former school building. Since the end of last year, Tadano has been recounting his experiences to visitors to the building, in the hope that "the experiences at Okawa Elementary may help lead to saving many lives."
A memorial zone is also scheduled to be established in a neighboring area. It is hoped that this will become a venue to keep in people's minds the importance of disaster management at schools.
Working together
In Minami-Sanriku, a town next to Ishinomaki, residents are divided over what to do with the ruins of its former disaster management headquarters building. The building has already been placed under prefectural ownership. The decision over whether to dismantle it has been postponed until 2031. As the complex feelings of local residents are involved, the response should be made all the more carefully.
When it comes to preserving buildings where there were no fatalities, there have already been several precedents established.
When the tsunami hit the then Arahama Elementary School in Sendai, there were 320 people there, including schoolchildren, teachers and other staff of the school and residents who evacuated from the neighborhood. The school building managed to withstand the tsunami, saving the lives of all the people there.
The city government of Sendai has developed the building as a relic of the quake, opening classrooms and other sections in their disaster-hit condition to the public from last April. About 60,000 people have visited so far, both from Japan and abroad. How such things came about as people being rescued by helicopters from the building are presented via video testimony and the like. Some of the people giving explanations experienced the disaster themselves.
This could be a typical example of work to pass on the memories of the quake to the next generation through public-private cooperation.
The prefectural government of Fukushima plans to construct an archival facility in an area where preparations are being made to lift evacuation orders in Futaba, a town just four kilometers away from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Photos, video images and relics related to the nuclear accident are to be preserved and put on display.
In November last year, officials from the prefectural government and elsewhere entered the prefecture-run hospital located in the difficult-to-return zone and collected broken timepieces while measuring radiation levels. If file footage was transmitted from there via the internet, it could help raise awareness of disaster management related to a nuclear accident.
In the surrounding areas, there will also be a new industrial base and a prayers-for-reconstruction park developed. It is hoped that these will also help promote the return of former residents to the area.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 4, 2018)
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