15 Years On: Teacher Shares Memories of 2 Disasters with Young

Kobe, March 9 (Jiji Press)–Koji Yamaguchi, a 38-year-old schoolteacher in Kobe, western Japan, has made it his mission to share his experiences of two catastrophes with younger generations. He grew up in Hyogo Prefecture and went on to attend university in Miyagi Prefecture, each home to communities devastated by large-scale natural disasters. “I have a responsibility to speak as someone who has lived in both places,” Yamaguchi says. He now passes on his memories to students who did not live through either the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake or the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Yamaguchi currently teaches biology as well as disaster preparedness and response at Rokko Gakuin Junior and Senior High School, a private school in Kobe, capital of Hyogo. In March 2011, he was a fourth-year student at Tohoku University in Sendai, capital of Miyagi, one of the northeastern prefectures hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake. On March 11, 2011, Yamaguchi was in the northern city of Sapporo, Hokkaido, to give a presentation at an academic conference when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck. He only felt a “slight tremor” there, but quickly understood the scale of the disaster as he watched television images of the massive tsunami surging ashore. “Places I knew were being swept away. Little by little, I understood what was happening,” he recalls. Yamaguchi lived in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, for nearly 10 years from 1997, two years after the 7.3-magnitude earthquake devastated Kobe and nearby areas. The rows of temporary housing set up in parks remain vivid in his memory and stirred in him a desire to help others from afar. “I want to do what I can,” he remembers thinking from Sapporo. Through his personal network, he contacted several survivors of the 1995 earthquake and collected practical experience-based tips that had proved useful in evacuation shelters–such as extending the life of paper plates by covering them with plastic wrap so they could be reused. He then passed this information on to friends in Sendai. In May 2011, at a friend’s suggestion, Yamaguchi visited the town of Shichigahama on the Pacific coast of Miyagi. It was a place he remembered fondly, where he had once spent time with fellow members of his university club. He had deliberately waited before going. “I knew there would be nothing left (after the tsunami),” he says, “but I was afraid to accept that as reality.” When he arrived, the familiar contours of the town were gone. The sight of the landscape, still littered with washed-up containers, moved him to tears. Yet the waves breaking on the shore looked unchanged from before the disaster. “I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of nature,” he recounts. Every January, second-year students from Rokko Gakuin Junior High School visit areas affected by the March 11 disaster, including the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi. Before they depart, Yamaguchi, who leads a preparatory class for the trip, shares his own experiences with them. His central message is the importance of “everyday life before the disaster.” Using photos of himself playing on a beach in Shichigahama, together with Google’s “Memories for the Future” service–which allows users to compare images from before and after the March 2011 disaster–he shows the students what the landscape looked like when it was still untouched. “I want them to put themselves in that situation and think about what they would do (if a disaster occurs),” he says. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]