

Initially, children lived in shelters so, that’s where TERACO set up. To address this problem, Ogusu established TERACO, a learning center where students could study and prepare themselves to compete for acceptance into high school, college or jobs. The tsunami disrupted their lives, and they fell out of the habit of studying, not just in Shizugawa but in other affected areas as well.” “When they moved into temporary housing, they were so spread apart and there was no one to help them. “Initially, the children were living in temporary shelters, where their teachers were staying,” says Yoshiaki Sato of the Sendai Kiwanis Club. One recipient is the new Miyano Mori Elementary School. Eight of the area’s 14 elementary and middle schools were flooded in the disaster, leading Kiwanis to focus on children’s educational needs by supporting tutoring programs and donating equipment to affected schools. It was a concern she held in common with area Kiwanis members. A volunteer from Tokyo, Ogusu quickly understood the effect the disaster would have on students and their education. He also volunteered to help other survivors at a temporary shelter set up in the Shizugawa Elementary School gymnasium. Stunned by his personal loss, Souta Sasaki wandered through the debris of his beloved city. At the Okawa Elementary School where Takayoshi taught second grade, 74 students died or remain missing. One year and four months later, his body was discovered and identified-another victim of one of the disaster’s saddest tragedies. Sasaki and his mother, Chika, were reunited five days later. The middle school students remained in the classroom for three days. I thought my father would be safe, because his school was farther away.” “She was a kindergarten teacher at a nearby school that was close to the shore. “I thought my mother probably had died,” he says. His thoughts turned quickly to his parents. “There were fires everywhere,” he recalls of his first view of Shizugawa. Students were kept inside until the water receded. The vehicle sways, but the tires find traction and the bus escapes. In one scene, water catches the rear wheels of a bus as it moves up the switchback road toward the school. Cars and trucks bob among the raging river of wreckage. Houses disintegrate as they crash into one another. The sea easily rushes over two-story-tall harbor walls and floods the town. Videos, shot from the middle school’s vantage point, show traffic speeding away from the coast and lines of people climbing concrete steps toward the highly-placed school. Move to higher ground.” (Endo died at her station when waters overwhelmed the town’s three-story Crisis Management Department building.) Within minutes of the quake, sirens swept back and forth across the port, and Miki Endo’s calm, strong voice echoed off the hillside, calling, “Warning! A tsunami is approaching. And that is why and how Souta Sasaki and Kiwanis met. It also disrupted the educational routine for area students. Shizugawa’s Crisis Management Department building. 3.11 changed the way Japan looks at and prepares for earthquakes and tsunamis. According to the Japan National Police Agency, more than 15,000 people died. Collectively, the three-part disaster is commonly called 3.11. It spawned waves, some of which reached nearly 100 feet, which caused a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The Great East Japan Earthquake is one of the most powerful to hit Japan. NASA calculated that the shift may have shortened the length of each day by about 1.8 microsecond. The land surface on sections of Honshu island fell. About 50 miles to the east, 18 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a massive tectonic plate slipped. With commencement scheduled the next day, he and his classmates were sorting papers, which their teacher had just handed out.

I just knew I wanted to come back home.Īt 2:46 in the afternoon on March 11, 2011, Sasaki sat at his desk inside the hilltop school. He’d attend Kesennuma High School and a university.īut that’s about as far as his plans went. Tomorrow, March 12, 2011, he would graduate from Shizugawa Middle School. After suffering three disasters in one, Kiwanis Japan targets one key area of need: education.Īt 15 years old, Souta Sasaki was moving on.
