I was three at the time and was shopping with my mother in a large tall mall; it was a peaceful, ordinary day just like any other one. Then suddenly, the building began to shake tremendously as if the world was ending. The items on the shelf fell like rain, and I remembered my mother guarded me against the falling items by covering me with her body.
We were so close and her heart was beating so fast that I couldn’t even tell if it was mine of hers. As soon as the shake stopped temporarily, my mother and I escaped from the building and ran to her bike. My mother biked us home at her fastest speed hoping that the earthquake wouldn’t start again until we arrived. After we got home, we soon discovered that Japan was going through its strongest earthquake in history; the 311 Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake.
We soon found out that the electricity went out. In addition to that, my father, who had work that day, still was not home yet. We sent him several texts, but he never responded. As the night came, all I remembered was it was a cold March day, and my mother offered me her phone for the first time to let me watch cartoons. It grew really cold and dark in the house, so our kind neighbor offered us to stay with her and her son in the car with AC on. I finally felt secured and my fingers’ nerves calmed for the first time that evening.
Our worries were all gone when we saw a little blue Honda Fit driving to our house. It was my father’s car; he was safe. My mother and I got in his car after thanking our neighbor, and we slept in it that day. The next day, we went back to our house because the electricity was back.
Luckily, the house survived the earthquake, and nothing major broke. That is all that I remember since 11 years have passed since that tragedy but I definitely remember how terrified I was despite the fact that I was used to earthquakes. (Earthquakes happened pretty often in Japan, so people were all used to small ones.) It felt like the world was shaking eforever, and everything was collapsing.
Fortunately, the province we lived in did not have any ocean close to it, so we had no tsunamis or other natural disasters that would happen after earthquakes. We were one of the provinces that had the least damage even though we were close to some heavily damaged places.
This was the very first news that I remember hearing about and experiencing. This earthquake killed more than 18,000 people, and many are still missing. Some were even forced to leave their hometown after the nuclear disaster happened. This was so destructive that even today, 11 years after the disaster, there are still people fixing their broken houses and their broken communities. This one ordinary, peaceful day became the death date for many people, the day when families got separated from each other forever, and the date that caused some people to lose their homes permanently.
We were so close and her heart was beating so fast that I couldn’t even tell if it was mine of hers. As soon as the shake stopped temporarily, my mother and I escaped from the building and ran to her bike. My mother biked us home at her fastest speed hoping that the earthquake wouldn’t start again until we arrived. After we got home, we soon discovered that Japan was going through its strongest earthquake in history; the 311 Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake.
We soon found out that the electricity went out. In addition to that, my father, who had work that day, still was not home yet. We sent him several texts, but he never responded. As the night came, all I remembered was it was a cold March day, and my mother offered me her phone for the first time to let me watch cartoons. It grew really cold and dark in the house, so our kind neighbor offered us to stay with her and her son in the car with AC on. I finally felt secured and my fingers’ nerves calmed for the first time that evening.
Our worries were all gone when we saw a little blue Honda Fit driving to our house. It was my father’s car; he was safe. My mother and I got in his car after thanking our neighbor, and we slept in it that day. The next day, we went back to our house because the electricity was back.
Luckily, the house survived the earthquake, and nothing major broke. That is all that I remember since 11 years have passed since that tragedy but I definitely remember how terrified I was despite the fact that I was used to earthquakes. (Earthquakes happened pretty often in Japan, so people were all used to small ones.) It felt like the world was shaking eforever, and everything was collapsing.
Fortunately, the province we lived in did not have any ocean close to it, so we had no tsunamis or other natural disasters that would happen after earthquakes. We were one of the provinces that had the least damage even though we were close to some heavily damaged places.
This was the very first news that I remember hearing about and experiencing. This earthquake killed more than 18,000 people, and many are still missing. Some were even forced to leave their hometown after the nuclear disaster happened. This was so destructive that even today, 11 years after the disaster, there are still people fixing their broken houses and their broken communities. This one ordinary, peaceful day became the death date for many people, the day when families got separated from each other forever, and the date that caused some people to lose their homes permanently.