Public Duty Before Personal Worries

For some, the well-trained response by this quake-prone land was something to be proud of in a weekend of humbling setbacks. Even before the government mobilized Japan's Self-Defense Forces, local groups such as volunteer firefighters were hard at work. Riot police managed the Shimo Yahagi school morgue, and police from Osaka 450 miles away, worked in Rikuzentakata itself — many volunteers were putting public duty before personal worries.

On an approach road to the city, Kenichi Onodera was waving a flag to control traffic amid aftershocks and additional tsunami warnings Sunday.

"My relatives live near the sea, and I really want to look for them, but I have to serve here," said Onodera, 51, a volunteer firefighter who works at a chicken farm.

He worried about residents who had moved to appointed evacuation zones, which are common in Japan, soon after the first tsunami alert. Later came calls to move to even higher ground, but for many they came too late.

"The tsunami was too big, it washed out those evacuation centers with the people," Onodera said.

"My legs were shaking when I saw the aftermath" of the tsunami, he said, "but we must keep on living. People will return to live here again."

Kawai Saiichi, 58, said he was driving his forklift truck, moving crates of sake bottles in the warehouse of Rikuzentakata's Drunken Immortals sake brewery, when his cellphone buzzed with an earthquake warning. At the very same time, bottles of the Japanese rice wine and roof tiles were crashing to the ground.

"It seemed like I was riding on a wave," he said.

He ran to his car and drove 12 miles to rescue his 90-year-old mother. He got her into the car and as they were driving to an emergency shelter they stopped on a hilltop road above the city. There they watched aghast as the tsunami claimed their town.

"There's a 20-foot breaker wall, but the tsunami came 6 feet over it," Saiichi said.

As a community leader responsible for 80 households, he went door-to-door to alert mostly elderly residents and to drive several of them to the shelter.

"We have earthquake drills, and we know what to do," Saiichi said. His own future is less certain: "I don't have a house, any money, and all my assets. All I have is what I'm wearing now — and my car."

Personal Stories

As enormous as the disaster looked on TV, the tragedy can be broken down to thousands of more poignant stories. In Rikuzentakata, Etsuko Koyama escaped the water rushing through the third floor of her home, but lost her grip on her young daughter's hand and has not found her.

"I haven't given up hope yet," Koyama told public broadcaster NHK, wiping tears from her eyes. "I saved myself, but I couldn't save my daughter."

Ayumi Osuga, 24, said she had been practicing origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into figures, with her three children when the quake stuck. She gathered her children — age 2 to 6 — and fled to higher ground with her husband. They spent the night in a hilltop home belonging to relatives.

"I have come to realize what is important in life," Osuga said, flicking ashes from a cigarette onto the rubble at her feet as a giant column of black smoke billowed in the distance.

As night fell and temperatures dropped to freezing in Sendai, people who had slept under overpasses or in offices the past two nights gathered for warmth in community centers, schools and City Hall.

At a large refinery on the outskirts of the city, 100-foot-high bright orange flames rose in the air, spitting out dark plumes of smoke. The facility has been burning since Friday. A gaseous stench hung in the air.

In the small nearby town of Tagajo, dazed residents said the water surged in and quickly rose higher than the first floor of buildings. At Sengen General Hospital, the staff worked to haul bedridden patients up the stairs one at a time. With the halls now dark, those who can leave have gone to the local community center.

"There is still no water or power, and we've got some very sick people in here," hospital official Ikuro Matsumoto said.

It took Shinichirou Uto 24 hours to drive from Tokyo to survey the damage at a wrecked Lawson convenience store in Rikuzentakata. Founded in Ohio, the franchise chain is tackling blackouts in 1,300 stores, said Uto, Lawson's director of construction planning.

"We don't know yet if we will rebuild, but we are gathering donations at other stores, and providing water,"

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