Recently a priest, Fr. Richard
Helmer, from Diocese of California, visited the Let Us Walk Together Project
with his son, Daniel and his friend Fr. Shintaro Ichihara, chaplain of Rikkyo jr.
high and high school. Fr. Ichihara has visited and volunteered with the project
many times so he knew a lot about the area and the disaster. On a Saturday
morning a couple of weeks ago my fellow coworker joined these three kind men.
We went around the Ishinomaki area seeing the various disaster sites.
One of the sites
was a high school.
When the earthquake
happened on March 11 they had 30 minutes before the tsunami came. In Japan earthquakes are
common so every school has drills and well defined rules for what to do if they
are to come. If they do happen then everyone is supposed to leave the building
immediately. While tsunamis happen they are not as common so there are not
rules on what to do. So on this day when the earthquake happened and the
principal was away the teachers had a hard time deciding what to do. They
finally decided that they should evacuate the building and seek higher ground.
So all the students formed a line and exited the building walking along the big
hill by the school. One of the teachers went back into the building to make
sure everyone had left. He didn’t have enough time to make it out before the
tsunami came so he went to the roof and watched as the tsunami
took 10 teacher's and 74 of the 103 student's lives. That teacher has not been able to
talk since the disaster.
Now that school
is a memorial site. It’s a place where there is no laughing; all the talking is
done in whispers. There is a alter where people have left flowers, pictures, and some of the former students favorite food. I want to ask you to keep the family of these students and teachers in your prayers. I especially want to ask for your prayers for the teacher who watched it all happen.
Thanks for tuning in,
Katie
P.S. For more information about that trip please read Fr. Richard's
blog.
Katie- I have read both blogs and this stunned me. How does one come back from seeing what the teacher saw?
ReplyDeleteThank you.
MoM