Story of Mika Takana

Mika Takana was cooking in her second-floor Sendai apartment when the earthquake struck. As everything started shaking and falling, she remembers some things vividly.

She watched a 31-story downtown building swaying and saw the communications tower on its roof fall over. She saw the power poles swaying and the power lines moving like jump ropes. But mainly she remembers a strange sound – the buildings around her were literally groaning and crying.

“It was a strange sound that I’ve never heard in my life. The buildings were moving so hard, they were making a sound like crying,” she said.

Mika ran out of her apartment, without shoes. “Next time, I will take shoes,” she said with a smile. 
She wound up in a nearby cold, dark school gym with 1,000 others, including tourists who had just arrived from Europe. The earthquakes continued, she said, with about two days of seemingly continuous shaking. “We were always afraid the next one would be even bigger,” she said.

The cheerful, outgoing Mika, a well-known Christian musician and worship leader, immediately began making friends and reaching out to others in the makeshift evacuation center. She was able to return to her apartment sooner than the others, so she went back and brought her blankets and pillows to others who had none.

She even began volunteering at the center, helping prepare food for her fellow evacuees with whom she had occupied a cold, dark gym floor.  As she has reached out with the tangible love of Jesus, some of her fellow shelter dwellers have already become close friends, including Chie Nakajima. Chie said that as her apartment rattled, she believes she heard a voice telling her to move out of the center of the room. So she grabbed her husband and moved against the wall, just as the ceiling collapsed where they had been standing.

Three weeks after the earthquake, Mika is still opening her electric-powered home so that her new friends who lack gas can have a hot shower.

“Mika is a great example of how people can show the love of Christ no matter how difficult the situation,” said Paul Nethercott of CRASH.