Head buried in her knees and arms wrapped around her legs, Yukino sat in the mud
shaking uncontrollably. Her mind reeled with the images of the man who had drowned
and the lady who had been trapped. She lifted her dirty face, and tears streamed down her
cheeks. “Gomenasai. I’m sorry,” she cried. “I wanted to help you.” Her throat stung with
the taste of guilt. Her face sank back to her knees and she sobbed.
“STAY ON HIGH GROUND. THE TSUNAMI WARNING HAS NOT
BEEN LIFTED,” blared the speakers over the wailing of the sirens.
Yukino lifted her head and wiped the tears away. She stood up shaking and
stumbled through the room and then up the stairs to the apartment on the third floor. She
slid open the closet, took out some clothes, and dressed into a T-shirt and shorts and then
pulled a grey trainer and pants over them. She took the quilt off the bed and wrapped it
around her and walked out onto the balcony.
Yukino stood there in utter shock. Below, piles of broken timber, mangled cars,
tables, chairs, drum cans, fishing nets, buoys, and tonnes of garbage littered the mud-
strewn street. The only things left standing were a few concrete builds, their first and
second floors gutted. Flurries of snow began to fall, the white flakes melting on the black
sludge. Her eyes wandered to where the hair salon had stood, but it was entombed under
a pile of twisted metal and wood. She then looked to where she had last seen the man
swimming. Her eyes searched the mud, and then she spotted an arm sticking upright, as if
signaling for help; he was wearing a fireman’s uniform. She looked closer and saw the
fishing net tangled around his leg, the net that had snagged him and pulled him under. She
bowed deeply in silence, once in the direction of the firefighter and then toward the
trapped lady.
Yukino stood there for a few more moments, her mind empty of all thoughts.
She bowed one last time and then walked back through the living room into the kitchen.
From there she had a view of the bay, and her eyes locked on the exposed seabed that
now stretched almost 500 meters out to Hyokkori Hyoutan Island. She didn’t need to be
told what was coming.
She heard some voices and rushed back out onto the balcony to see two elderly
men enter the remains of a building a few hundred meters down the road. And then three
women appeared briefly before disappearing into another gutted building.
“STAY ON HIGH GROUND. STAY ON HIGH GROUND,” blared the
speakers over the wailing of the sirens.
She heard movement in the stairwell and went to the door and saw a woman in
her early thirties; her jeans and jacket were caked in mud, and she was rummaging
through a drawer in the apartment opposite. The woman looked up and saw Yukino. “Are
you all right?” the woman asked, noticing her bloodshot eyes.
“Yes,” replied Yukino, holding back her tears.
“You should get to higher ground,” the woman said.
“The announcement said to stay on high ground. Why did you come back?”
asked Yukino.
“I need a few things.”
“What things?”
The woman looked at Yukino a little surprised. “My bank books, credit cards,
driver’s license—official things,” she replied, stuffing some papers in her handbag.
“Don’t you think you should stay here?” said Yukino. “The water has receded
past the Horai shrine on Hyokkori Hyoutan Island.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “What?” she said and went over to the window.
“You must be kidding!” she gasped, staring at the bare seabed. “Quick, come with me!”
Yukino shook her head. “No, I’m going to stay here,” she said defiantly.
“You should come with me. It isn’t safe here. There are some emergency stairs
to an evacuation area not far from here.”
“The announcement says to stay on high ground,” Yukino insisted.
“Take care then,” the woman said, hurrying out the door and down the stairs.
Yukino went back to the window and froze; a mountain of white water was
charging toward the town.
**
Mackeller looked down from his chopper, which hovered just off the coast of Sendai
City. The lines of whitewater raced toward the coast. The tsunamis had broken in the
shallows offshore. Mackeller turned and looked at the land; the first surge had flooded
large swathes of coastal area, which would make it easier for the next waves to move
farther inland.
He watched the first whitewater hit the coast and surge over the land, flattening
forests and smashing houses to pieces. He saw the water turn black as it mixed with the
soil and then move like thick black oil, causing the complete and utter destruction of
everything in its path.
“Jesus Christ!” he cursed.
“Sir! Look over there!” said his copilot.
Both men stared down in silence. The blackness moved across farmland,
devouring homesteads and crops. It then washed into a housing estate, tearing the first
houses from their foundations and sending them careening into the next, shattering them
into splintered piles of timber. Gas bottles exploded and fires broke out.
“Look!” said his copilot, pointing to a road that ran parallel to the coast behind
the housing estate.
Mackeller stared down at the cars trying to escape. The last row of houses fell,
and the black water erased the cars from the scene.
“Let’s go north,” said Mackeller. “Take the controls.”
“Roger, sir.”
Mackeller looked back as they flew north. The blackness was still moving
inland; fires dotted the moving sea, and smoke billowed from the piles of timber that were
once houses.
Mackeller ordered his copilot to slow as they passed over Kamaishi city.
Mackeller stared down at the female Buddhist statue that stood in the center of the harbor.
The protector of the city is just about to be tested, he thought.
“Hover,” he ordered.
The chopper slowed and then hovered.
He watched the wave rush at the breakwater wall that protected the harbor; the
wall that had cost $1.6 billion and took three decades to construct crumpled, leaving the
city defenseless. The wave roared through the harbor, devouring a small speedboat and
then crashed into the city, water exploding up the streets. Mackeller watched as the tanker,
the Asia Symphony, was torn from its mooring and washed into the city. The sea kept
pushing in, filling Kamaishi. The hills surrounding it acted like a sink, trapping the water
and flooding the buildings to the sixth floor.
Mackeller looked back to where the submerged breakwater wall was, and his
eyes caught something strange; another wave was moving in the opposite direction to the
tsunami. It was racing towards the fishing village of Ryoshi on the opposite side.
His copilot banked the chopper in the direction of the wave. “That wave was
made when the tsunami hit the breakwater wall, and the energy was deflected in the
opposite direction,” he said.
“It has also amplified in size.” Mackeller paused, studying the wave. “Probably
around thirty meters.”
They watched as the village of Ryoshi disappeared underwater in a matter of
seconds.
“To Otsuchi,” he ordered.
**
A tremor shook the apartment violently, and Yukino held onto the kitchen counter. She
peered out through the falling snow at the wall of water rushing at her. She ran back
through the living room and out onto the balcony; below she could see the lady she had
just met tramping through the muddy street.
“It’s coming!” she screamed, “It’s coming!”
The woman could only hear the wailing of the siren and the repeated warnings.
“STAY ON HIGH GROUND. STAY ON HIGH GROUND.”
**
Mackeller and his copilot watched the wave crash into the tsunami breakwater wall on the
south side of the Otsuchi harbor. The sea rose rapidly to double the height of the wall; the
ocean poured over, and a few moments later, the wall collapsed and the sea surged in and
obliterated everything.
**
The wave came over the tsunami wall and crashed through the town.
“Run!” screamed Yukino to the people on the street.
The women and the men heard the roaring of the water and the snapping of
timber and ran for the emergency stairs at the bottom of a hill. The wave tore through the
street. The old men were slow, and the wave got them before they had gone barely fifty
meters. The building trembled, and at first, Yukino thought it was the wave but then
quickly realized it was another earthquake; she held onto the railing and watched the
woman in the jeans and jacket fall to the ground. The woman tried to get up but slipped in
the mud; the wave caught her and she was gone.
Yukino stood there breathing heavily, steam coming from her mouth. Below the
water had risen to the second floor; she rushed back into the kitchen and stared out in awe
rather than shock. The level of the ocean was at least three times the height of the wall; the
whole ocean was pouring into the town. She rushed to the door and looked down the
stairs; the water was almost to the top. She bolted up the stairs and burst out onto the roof.
The street was a roaring rapid of black churning water, carrying with it half-submerged
cars, fishing boats, pieces of houses, jerry cans, and piles of broken wood and all sorts of
garbage.
She could see the hospital in the distance; doctors and nurses worked frantically
to get the elderly patients to the roof of the eight-story building. She let out a gasp when
she saw an old lady, still in her bed, swept out the window of the third floor.
Water was now only three meters below the roof of her building.
**
The mayor and his six aides watched the water seep out of the stairwell onto the floor.
“We will have to swim for it,” said the mayor, trying to keep his cool. But his
eyes betrayed his words. He looked at the young man’s petrified face next to him. “It’ll be
OK. We can make it.”
The man stared at him incoherently.
The water rose up to window level.
“Get ready!” shouted the mayor.
The black water rose quickly over the building, stranding them in pitch-blackness
with only the sound of gushing water around them. The glass cracked, and then an
avalanche of water exploded in, sweeping the young man across the room and pinning
him against the window. He felt the glass break and a sharp slice to his neck as he was
sucked from the room; he began to choke on his own blood and the dark ocean.
The mayor broke the surface but only for a second before he was sucked under
again.
**
Sachie and a group of people watched the destruction from the hill. The wall of blackness
crashed through the town. A dark dust like smoke spewed off the top of the wave as if it
was fuming. House after house fell and was washed into the next. The sound of cracking
timber, twisting metal, and exploding gas bottles reverberated in the air. The northern part
of the town was underwater, except for a few high buildings. Looking at the hospital,
Sachie could just make out, through the falling snow, nurses and doctors attending a
group of elderly people on the roof. She brushed the snow off her jacket, and her attention
turned to five people stranded on the roof of a building adjacent to the hospital. The water
was only a meter from the top, and the group of three men and two women huddled
together in the frigid conditions. Suddenly, the building rose up, and the water level
dropped to the second floor. The people stood up obviously confused but relieved they
had not been swept away to their deaths. One of the men rushed to the side and peered
over. He then turned back to the others and shrugged his bewilderment. Seconds later the
building lurched to the side, throwing the elderly man over the side. He disappeared
beneath the churning water. The others crouched down and clung onto each other as
tonnes of water pushed against the side of the building, forcing it to lean precariously to
the side, its foundations now close to breaking point. And then, as if in slow motion, the
building snapped off its foundations and toppled over, throwing the people into the icy
water. She saw them bob up amongst the waves a few times, and then they were gone.
“What happened?” Sachie gasped.
“I read about it,” said a man standing next to her.
“Read about what?”
The man pointed to the toppled building. “When the water level rises quickly, air
gets trapped in the lower floors, causing the building to float up, pulling its pylon
foundations out of the ground.”
Sachie didn’t say anything and just stared out at where the submerged building
had been.
The black wall of water, dust pouring off it, moved deeper into the town,
flooding the river and surging over the bridge, sweeping away two cars with the people
still inside. The water gushed further up the river and began to spill over the levee,
engulfing more of the town.
Sachie looked down at the neighborhood where her house was. Water was
pouring over the riverbanks and filling the streets. She searched for her house and lost a
heartbeat when she saw her mother standing on the balcony of the second floor.
**
In Ohari, Ibaraki Prefecture, an old lady trapped in her house after the earthquake was
drowned.
A car with a mother and her two children was swept off a bridge while they were
trying to flee the tsunami in Sendai.
Two high school sisters in Iwate Prefecture went back to their house after the
first tsunami to see if their grandparents were all right; they were caught by the second
tsunami and drowned.
In Fukushima, a salesman stopped his car three kilometers inland, thinking he
was safe; minutes later he was drowned.
Several elderly patients, still in their beds, were swept from the third floor of a
hospital and never seen again.
A father in Amori Prefecture racing to pick up his children from elementary
school was caught and drowned in his car.
Two hundred and fifty-four volunteer firefighters were drowned along the coast;
at least seventy-two were in charge of closing tsunami gates.
**
Water streamed into the shop just as Kumiko’s father pulled his feet free from under the
freezer. He struggled to his feet; both ankles were sprained, and he had a deep gash on his
right thigh. He hobbled through the kitchen with water now up to his ankles. He pushed
the door that led to the outside, but it was locked solid against the surge. The water rose
quickly to his waist. He pushed again and the door opened enough for him to jam his leg
in and then squeeze his body through. Outside the current was raging, and he grabbed
hold of the pole at the bottom of the stairs.
“Father!”
He looked up and saw Kumiko’s horrified eyes staring down at him.
He struggled to maintain his grip while the water rose to his chest. Kumiko ran
down a few steps and stretched her hand to him. He grabbed it and she tugged him
toward the steps. He let go of the pole and grabbed hold of the railing and heaved himself
onto the safety of the stairs. He sat there catching his breath. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re injured,” she replied, helping him to his feet. They moved to the top of
the stairs and watched the water rise.
**
The 120 children were spread out in a single line across the field, the deputy principal
leading and Hiro following up the rear. Hiro shook the snow out of his hair and looked at
his watch; it had been almost thirty-five minutes since the earthquake. A tremor ran
through the ground, and the children screamed.
“Squat down!” yelled Hiro over the rumble.
The tremor was gone in seconds.
“Stand up and keep walking,” yelled Hiro.
They stood and continued across the field.
Hiro stopped and listened. He could hear a snapping sound in the distance; his
heart stopped. Dust was swirling from the forest beyond the field, and a few seconds
later, water exploded out of the forest. His eyes darted to the riverbank, where water was
pouring over and gushing straight at them.
“Follow me!” shouted Hiro.
“No! Follow me!” shouted the deputy principal.
Hiro stood momentarily shocked. There was no way they could make it across
the bridge and then up the slope to safety. “There’s no time,” he shouted, pointing at the
black wall rushing toward them.
The deputy principal and the other teachers began running for the bridge. The
children stood confused. One of the teachers shouted to them to follow the deputy
principal, and a few at the head of the line started to run after him, and then more and
more followed.
“You’ll never make it!” shouted Hiro. The wall was only 500 meters from them.
“Follow me!”
Erica looked at the approaching wave and then at Hiro; she didn’t need to be
good at mathematics to solve this problem. She turned and ran in the direction Hiro was
pointing. The line split as other children followed Erica; the two girls in the Mickey
Mouse T-shirts stood undecided.
“She writes the number of death,” the girl with the plaits yelled in a panicked
voice. The other nodded and they ran after the deputy principal.
Hiro reached the bottom of the slope first.
“Ryo!” he shouted. “You lead them up.”
Ryo scrambled up the steep slope, setting a path through the trees. Erica was
next, followed by the other children.
The water was only 300 meters from the children in the field. Hiro knew they
stood no chance, but he blocked it from his mind and focused on saving the kids who had
followed him.
“Hurry!” yelled Hiro.
The two fat boys were lagging behind.
The water was only 200 meters away.
“Hurry!” Hiro shouted again.
The skinny boy reached the slope and turned around. It was obvious the two fat
boys weren’t going to make it. He darted back toward them.
“No!” screamed Hiro.
The skinny boy reached the two boys and grabbed them by the arms and sprinted
back toward the slope.
“Faster!” yelled Hiro.
They reached the slope with the wall of water just fifty meters away.
“Up!” yelled Hiro, taking hold of the two fat boys by the arms and dragging
them up.
Water erupted through the lower trees, snapping them like matchsticks.
They stopped and looked across the field; they couldn’t hear the screams of their
classmates over the roar of water, but they watched them all disappear beneath the
blackness.
**
Water exploded through the forest and raced across the open field. Mrs. Sasaki, still on
her knees next to her collapsed house, looked up. She pressed the framed photo of her
husband to her heart. “I’ll be with you soon.”
**
The water kept rising, and Ryota, trapped on the ledge of the cliff, had nowhere to go. He
had no choice; he would have to try to swim for it. At first, he couldn’t make out what it
was, but when it floated closer, he saw the words painted in red, Jomu Oil Co. The tank,
washed from one of the harbor’s oil storage facilities, was floating a meter or so above the
surface. Ryota leapt off the ledge, and his feet hit with a dull thud on the metal surface.
**
The surge had come so quickly and unexpectedly that the lady had barely enough time to
seek shelter inside her house, but that was her fatal mistake.
“Help!” she screamed. “Someone help me!”
Mr. Kubo swung off the rafter and kicked the ceiling in. He poked his head
through the hole and saw the woman clinging to the bed that floated on the other side of
the room. “Hold on!” he shouted. He pulled his head up and climbed over the rafters to
where he guessed she was and again kicked the ceiling in. He poked his head down but
all he saw was swirling water.
**
Yukino stood shaking in the howling wind, her tattered hair flecked with snow. Water
seeped over the roof and rushed between her numb feet. She stood there alone, paralyzed
by fear. All around her was the churning black ocean. The only thing visible through the
thickening snowfall was the top of the hospital; everything else was submerged beneath
the blackness.
The dark water reached her knees. The surge pushed her back a few steps. She
knew she would not survive in the water long; Yuta had said maximum of ten minutes.
She needed something to float on. She braced herself as the water rose to her waist. Her
eyes searched ahead as something rushed toward her—a mound of broken wood. She
waited until it was ten meters away and then dived in and swam for it, but the current was
stronger than she had anticipated, and the mound of wood sailed past her. She swam after
it, but the attempt was in vain. She was swept along in the seething and foaming rapids.
Wild waves crashed around her; time after time she was sucked down into the frenzied,
freezing blackness, but each time she fought her way back to the surface. Her body
temperature was plummeting, her breathing becoming shallow. She knew her life was
being drained by the icy blackness. She broke over the crest of a wave and caught a
glimpse of swirling water. Seconds later she was dragged into the whirlpool and then
sucked under, flung head over heels, lungs burning, ears bursting. She struggled for the
surface, but the blackness wouldn’t release her. She unwillingly opened her mouth and
choked on the filthy darkness—her last thought before death was the eyes of the trapped
woman at the beauty salon.
**
Kumiko sat holding her husband’s trembling hand; the water was just centimeters from
the top floor of the shop.
“It’s starting to recede,” called her father from the top of the stairs.
“We’re safe,” Kumiko whispered to her husband.
**
Seko sat with a group of neighbors in the forest overlooking where their houses had been
minutes before. She watched the black water draining from the town, carrying with it an
ocean of debris: smashed cars, burning houses, half-sunken fishing boats, oil tanks,
shipping containers, and piles and piles of splintered wood and twisted metal.
“There’s someone out there!” shouted one of her neighbors.
Seko looked in the direction the neighbor was pointing and could see a boy
waving both hands from the top of an oil tank. She watched him slowly disappear out to
sea.