Sendai People

SENDAI PEOPLE Inside the school gym, people huddled in blankets: In a corner were two women, three boys - one wearing a green belt And judo pants - two old men, and a dog. All talking in low tones, all dirty, injured. Outside the gym, waters were receding . Radiation didn’t scare Miki Otomoc : it was invisible. But in the quake Her son’s arm snapped in three as shop shelves fell on him. Sendai hospital collapsed : bone was set and plastered in a field. Miki’s house was destroyed as electric wires exploded gas leaks - Bussing to her mother’s house the driver yelled to get off the bus and run. “I and my two sons and their judo team-mate hurled ourselves From the deadly wall of water by scrambling six floors up a stairwell. Then I phoned the judo mother who was frantically waiting for her son.” Miki felt in her stomach waves of relief that all the boys had survived; And was now becoming aware of her cut foot, bruised from the bus-run. Outside the gym, medics were working. Maki Kobari escaped death but many of her friends couldn't run fast enough,, Horrified she watched their youth obliterated by the vortex of mud and debris, Their lives violently swept away by the black tide. She tried to yank one little girl from the torrent - The child was snatched back by the water’s force. “ I grabbed grandfather from his wheelchair, and our dog, and drove. The sight of my friends trying to outrun the killer wave right behind me Is seared in my memory but I choke trying to find the words.. . . and I couldn’t save the girl,” she sobbed and cuddled the muddy dog. Maki clutched grandad’s arm and the tears washed little clean paths on her dirty face. Outside the gym, deliveries of milk were arriving. Old Yoichi Aizawa was afraid but unshaken. He had endured the B29 fire bombing Of his childhood home when mother pushed him into a river to avoid burning alive, “When the earthquake shook, my house was damaged ; But when the waves came unexpectedly, that was the most scary thing. I grabbed two of my books and was pushed into a potato truck with the neighbours And we fled up into the hills.” Yoichi felt nauseated thinking of his brother long ago With a broken arm and skin dripping off it in the firestorm. He brushed the potato soil from his pants and glanced repeatedly At the old-fashioned photo with burnt edges in his hand. Outside the gym, blossoms were opening