Amid Sendai's Devastation, a Father Seeks His Daughter

Amid Sendai's Devastation, a Father Seeks His Daughter



The Earthquake in Japan

By HANNAH BEECH / SENDAI Sunday, Mar. 13, 2011 , TIMES MAGAZINE ONLINE

Bowlegged and rheumy-eyed, 76-year-old farmer Masahira Kasamatsu barreled down the sodden path. His pants were rolled above his knees and his shoeless feet were covered with inky mud deposited by the tsunami that had swept across northeastern Japan three days earlier, killing thousands upon thousands of people. "I'm looking for my daughter," he said, barely breaking his stride as we negotiated fallen electricity poles and mangled cars. "Her name is Yoko Oosato. Have you seen her?"

Kasamatsu's daughter 1. __________(work) for 30 years at the airport in Sendai, the largest city in the devastated region. After a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the worst in Japan's history, 2. ________(strike) on March 11, the coastal airport 3. ________(deluge) by a 10-m-high wave of water that churned up debris and mud several kilometers inland. Hundreds of upturned cars, airplanes and trucks littered the waterlogged landscape.

For three days, Kasamatsu, whose coastal home 4. __________(flood) by the tsunami, called his daughter's cell phone to no avail. He 5. _______(listen) to the death rolls on the radio. He did not hear her name. Finally, Kasamatsu and his wife, Emiko, climbed into their car and drove toward the airport. The roads were barely passable; petrol ran out. The couple spent the night in their unheated car before he abandoned the vehicle and began desperately wading through water and mud to get to the airport.

"I know there are so many people that are dead," he said, as we entered the terminal building, passing 6-m-high piles of cars and uprooted pines. A pair of 6. _______(discard) sandals sat neatly in front of the domestic terminal. "I know that my daughter may be just one more person among so many dead. But my 7. ______(deep) hope is that she is alive. That 8. ______(be) my only prayer at this moment."

Across northern Japan, invocations 9. ______(utter)by family members who still had no idea whether their loved ones were alive or dead. Tens of thousands of people were still unaccounted for, and radio stations 10. _________(labour) relayed information about centenarians looking for their relatives or dead children identified by their birthmarks. Cell-phone networks were down in much of the region, and vast lakes formed by the tsunami rendered roads 11. ______(pass).

With food, water and gas 12. ______(run) low, lines of people snaked through towns in stretches of several kilometers, waiting patiently for whatever sustenance could be found, even as temperatures 13. ______(dip) toward freezing. Adding to the distress, nuclear reactors in Fukushima prefecture were in danger of suffering meltdowns as a result of the quake and tsunami, 14. _______(send) radioactive material into air already bursting with tragedy. On Sunday, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan called the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and possible nuclear fallout the country's "worst crisis" since World War II.



In Miyagi prefecture, a group of students from the Civil Aviation College floated in an inflatable yellow raft across what was dry land just three days before. Some 170 students and airplane-maintenance employees 15. _______(watch) the tsunami roll in from the roof of a school building, where they 16. ________(decamp) after the earthquake triggered a tsunami alert that was broadcast on loudspeakers, radios and TVs. "The tsunami came toward us so slowly that it was hard to understand what 17. _______(approach)," recalled Satoshi Tsuchira, 24. "But then it came and kept on coming and I wondered if it would ever end."

A 10-m-high wave of water 18. _______(maroon) their building and sent a churning mass of vehicles, planes and houses swirling past them. The students kept their eyes on a solitary man who clung to the top of a bobbing truck for a night and 19. ______(gasp) as the receding waters pulled dozens of cars out to sea. Those stranded on the roof had only one box of energy cookies for every four individuals. Rationing began, and a cold rain continued. On a nearby road, a forlorn piano lay on its side, along with an office stripped of its wall. After more than 24 hours, the fire department arrived to rescue the trapped students. As they ferried some of their belongings from their dorm to high ground, the prospect of a radioactive cloud possibly making its way toward them was too much to comprehend. "We have suffered through an earthquake and a tsunami," said Koutaro Nousou. "Our college is underwater. I can't deal with another disaster. It's just too much."

As the students gathered up their things to take to an unheated evacuation center where they would sleep two to one blanket, Masahira Kasamatsu 20. ________(make) his way to the Sendai airport. Entering the terminal, he climbed up a suspended escalator that wobbled under his weight and quietly approached a man in a gray jacket who looked like he was in charge. His name was Kenichi Numata. After suffering through the earthquake, Numata immediately headed to the designated high ground — in his case the airport — as he 21. ______(teach) in the tsunami drills conducted up and down coastal Japan. Numata had watched from the airport as dozens of people 22. _______(succumb) in the surrounding water. He now knew that his house 23. _______(wash) away. "Everything is gone," he said, with a sweep of his hand. "It's all gone."

But there was little time to process this loss. Numata 24. ________(designate) as one of the section leaders organizing the 1,600 people initially stranded at the Sendai airport. They 25. _________(complete) cut off, with no cell-phone access or information about what 26. ________(befall) the rest of the region. "What is your daughter's name, again?" he asked Kasamatsu. The farmer slowly repeated her name and stared into the middle distance. Numata and others conferred. "Yoko Oosato, is it," Numata said. "Why, she went home just a little while ago." It took a moment for Kasamatsu to process the news. He nodded slowly. "She's O.K.," he repeated, as if to convince himself. "She's O.K."

We drove Kasamatsu through the floodwaters back to his wife, who was waiting beside their car, 27. ______(mangle) vehicles and 28. ______(twist) buildings all around. As we approached, she dove into her car to offer me an armful of oranges and apples in gratitude for 29. _______(drive) her husband back from the airport. Only as she gathered up the fruit did their eyes meet. "And Yoko?" she asked her husband. "She's O.K.," Kasamatsu replied. "She's O.K." There were no hugs or overwhelming expressions of elation. Their daughter 29. _________(spare). But devastation was still all around.

ANSWERS- 1. Had worked 2. Struck 3. Was deluged 4. Had been flooded 5. Listened 6. Discarded 7. Deepest 8 is 9 were being uttered 10 laboriously 11 impassable 12 running 13 dipped 14 sending
15. had watched 16 had decamped 17. Was approaching 18 marooned 19 gasped 20 was making 21 had been taught 22 succumbed 23 had washed away 24 had been designated 25 had been completely 26 had befallen 27 mangled 28 twisted 29 having driven 30 had been spared

The Earthquake in Japan, March 2011

The Earthquake in Japan
After a Disaster, What Defines a Country's Resilience?



By DR. SHERI FINK Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2011 . TIME MAGAZINE

Japan, March 15, 2011.

GRAMMAR- perfect tenses, present, past

The unfolding crisis in Japan is marked by uncertainty, but seasoned emergency responders have a clear mission: to promote resilience in survivors. Resilience, in this sense, is a metaphor for the quality of an elastic object that springs back into shape after being deformed. Resilient people and communities are those that recover readily from trauma.

In the acute phase of a disaster, fostering resilience has more to do with social than psychological assistance. Not long ago, it was common to find therapists rushing to a disaster zone, 1. _________(engage) survivors in a discussion about the trauma they had just experienced, and sometimes indiscriminately dispensing sedatives. So-called "critical incident stress debriefing," which still has its adherents, 2. ________(fall) out of vogue. It's "been found to be ineffective," says Dr. Leslie Snider, a psychiatrist and senior technical adviser for the War Trauma Foundation in the Netherlands.

Research and experience 3. _______(lead) experts to focus instead on promoting social interventions that decrease stress and restore a sense of control, safety and normality whenever possible. That includes ensuring that survivors 4. ________(be) social support and access to information about the emergency. It also means arming people with practical knowledge about how to help themselves and those around them, a sort of emotional first aid that anyone can offer to a neighbor, friend or loved one. Helping others "is good for the people 5. ________(help) as well as the people providing that help," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "The more people know what they're supposed to do and what they can expect, the more capable they will be in responding to a disaster."

By the measure of self-help, the Japanese 6. _______( already show) great signs of resilience, which benefits from good disaster 7. ________(prepare). The government is working with private companies such as supermarkets to increase food aid to disaster survivors. Hundreds of disaster medical teams 8. _________(deploy), and many localities are drawing upon pre-existing agreements to aid each other in times of need. Many regular citizens 9. _________( also step) forward to assist, including offering private buildings to shelter the displaced.

With an estimated 15,000 people still missing, 10. ________(reunite) family members with surviving relatives as quickly as possible, and 11. ________(bring) those without families into social networks, is also important for recovery, particularly among children. " 12. ______(be) a buffering adult who's protective, who's reassuring and is confident, can help children get through the most traumatic situations relatively unscathed," Redlener says.

The United Nations estimates that about half a million people have moved to evacuation centers in Japan, almost half of them from areas around nuclear plants. Aid workers from the nonprofit organization Save the Children USA have set up a play area in one center in Sendai and are planning for more. "The most simple interventions really change lives," says Deb Barry, global director for child protection at the organization.

Save the Children 13. ______(train) disaster-affected volunteers to staff these "child friendly spaces" in emergencies. The idea is to give children a safe place to be kids. Barry says she 14. _______(see) "children who just literally don't speak, who are really afraid of things, even the sound of a truck going by because it reminds them of an earthquake. All the sudden, [they] get this confidence back where they can really express themselves."

Quickly 15. _______(restart) school may be an even stronger way to promote resilience in children. "In Japan, children's lives are very structured," Barry says. "We're already getting a sense children want to be back in school."

Cultural insights like that are important for responders from overseas. The Japanese government 16. ______( officially accept) assistance from 14 countries, and hundreds of international relief and search and rescue workers have already arrived. In particular, acts of mourning and recovery often draw on specific religious and spiritual practices and beliefs; in Japan, naming and identifying those who have died will be particularly important. When it comes to offering counseling, Japanese nationals are the best ones to provide it, says Yukie Osa, a professor of sociology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo and board chair of the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan. "It will be difficult for foreigners," she says. "The culture will be very different."

Osa, whose organization 17. ________(assist) survivors in Japan after having provided emergency relief around the world, including in war-ravaged Afghanistan and after the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, says Japanese people are used to giving overseas disaster aid, not getting it. "It's our first time to be helped," she says, but with such a vast area of devastation, ongoing displacement, harsh weather, and some places yet to be reached, the help is welcome. "I think people are ready to receive foreign assistance." She adds: "It's not only the goods, but also the people that are a help."

A recent newscast showed Pakistani residents of Japan 18. _________(cook) boiled rice for displaced people in a school. "The Pakistani person interviewed said, 'Since we were helped by Japanese people five years ago when the earthquake hit [Pakistan], now it is our turn to help Japanese people,'" Osa says. A child eating food in the gymnasium said that the curry was spicy, but delicious. "She 19. _______(smile)," Osa says. "It was a very touching scene."

Psychiatrist Snider says that profound events lead not only to losses, but also to unexpected gains, including new knowledge and skills. "Our lives are all about how we make meaning of events," she says. "How we pull the thread of our life's story through a very tragic or significant event is particularly important, because [the event] 20. __________(become) a part of that life story." Promoting resilience, she said, is about helping survivors search for and find their own meaning.

Dr. Fink is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, author of War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival, and a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. She has worked with humanitarian aid organizations in more than a half dozen emergencies in the U.S. and overseas.


ANSWERS -Grammar- 1 engaging 2 has fallen 3 have led 4 have 5 being helped 6 have already shown 7 preparedness 8 have been deployed 9 have also stepped 10 reuniting 11 bringing 12 having 13 trains 14 has seen 15 restarting 16 has officially accepted 17 is assisting 18 cooking 19 was smiling 20 becomes