by Leza Lowitz
and to help our town,
I know
I’ll stay.
*1 kanji—a Japanese writing system consisting of ideograms
*2 Arigatou gozaimasu!—Thank you very much!
I was in Tokyo, Japan, when the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011. We were used to quakes, but this one was different. The massive sharp thrust followed by a violent back-and-forth shaking grew in intensity with each second. I ran out of the building I was in. On the street, I watched a skyscraper sway from side to side above me, hoping it would not come down. Strangers huddled together as the pavement rippled and buckled under us like a wave. This kept on for six minutes. What registered as a 7.5 in Tokyo was a 9.0 along the Tohoku coast. We didn’t know that yet. We didn’t know that minutes after the quake hit, a massive tsunami slammed onto the shore and devastated those ancient seaside towns.
With no way to know if my six-year-old son was okay, I traversed the city by foot as the sky turned red. Dark clouds hung over the horizon. Sudden rain poured down. When I arrived at my son’s kindergarten, I discovered that his eighty-year-old grandfather had already walked the two miles to get him. Safely at home, we watched the news in horror as aftershocks kept coming, jolting already-weakened foundations and rattling nerves. My husband arrived home late that night after walking seven hours from work to our home in west Tokyo. News of a nuclear leak had many residents packing up to leave. Thousands of people were killed, and thousands more would never be found. It would be years before life would return to normal.
Though the decision was agonizing, my family and I chose to stay. Japan had given me so much. It was the least I could do to try to give something back. As I watched from the relatively close (but far enough to be “safe”) distance of Tokyo, I wanted to write down everything I saw, heard, and experienced. Though I wasn’t in the tsunami zone, the very real and constant shaking of the earth was enough to remind me of the magnitude of the experience.
In the coming days, many who stayed mobilized to help their neighbors. The yoga studio I own organized relief to send to Ishinomaki, Minamisanriku, Rikuzentakata, Oshika, and other devastated towns through the extensive efforts of Second Harvest Japan, Animal Rescue Niigata, and Caroline Pover. Animals that were abandoned were rescued by fearless volunteers who went into the irradiated zones. When school started again after spring break, I traveled to Tohoku and volunteered at the temporary housing shelters with Shanti Volunteer Association and YAM Japan. Also, Sun and Moon Yoga’s Community Class funds helped open a library in Oshika, a town that was devastated by the tsunami. Now the community can have books to read and a quiet, clean, homey place to enjoy them—and a garden!
Inspired by a young boy I met in the disaster zone, I began a novel about a boy who loves soccer and creates a team to rally his town after the tsunami. Months later, I discovered that exactly this had been done in coastal Onagawa. The team is the Cobaltore Onagawa Football Club. Supporters from all over the world helped in the difficult days following the disaster.
Later, I learned that a soccer ball that had belonged to a teenager in Rikuzentakata washed up in Alaska. Amazingly, the ball was found by a man with a Japanese wife who could read the messages written on it. The couple traced the owner and traveled to Japan to return the ball.
I’ve based this novel on the events of March 11, 2011, and their aftermath, including the above tales, as well as events surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, but this story is a work of fiction. Kai is not the boy mentioned above, and the town described in this novel is a composite of several coastal towns struck by the disaster. The geography, history, and characters within these pages are solely a work of the imagination, and any errors are the fault of the author.
The author would like to acknowledge the following sources for shedding light on the many events that inspired this book: Peace Boat Japan, Robert Gilhooly’s photographs (japanphotojournalist.com), USA Today (Monday, September 12, 2011), The New York Times (Monday September 12, 2011, story by Anemona Hartocollis), The Japan Times, Time magazine (story by Kate Springer: newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/24/soccer-ball-lost-in-japan-tsunami-surfaces-in-alaska), and the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun.
I would like to thank Em Bettinger, Eric Korpiel, and Wayne Shaw, who shared their firsthand experiences of their visits to the tsunami areas in interviews conducted in Tokyo from March to September 2011. Special thanks to Lucy Birmingham, Tomoko Kawahara, Ikuhiro Nakamura, Yaeko Yonezawa, Momoyo Yamaguchi, Takuma Kawamura, and the people of Kesennuma for their valiant spirits and open arms. I bow to you.
In June 2011, four Japanese high school students who lost their parents and family members in the tsunami, and university students whose parents had perished in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, Japan, flew to New York to raise awareness and money for the children of Tohoku orphaned in the March 11, 2011, disaster. Two American students, one who had lost her father in 9/11 and another who had lost his mother in Hurricane Katrina, joined efforts organized by the Ashinaga (“Daddy Long Legs”) NGO. I was deeply inspired by this story of survivors of tragedies in one country reaching out to survivors in another. I took creative liberty in imagining a meeting between children of 3/11 and children of 9/11 culminating in a visit to the National September 11 Memorial on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
For help with the manuscript at various stages, heartfelt gratitude especially to my writing partner, Colleen Sakurai, and to Toshiko Yanagihara (angel on earth!), Hatsumi Ishikawa, Sylvie Frank, Jill Corcoran, Susan Korman, Linda Gerber, Shoji Koike, and Deni Béchard, and to Holly Thompson, Suzanne Kamata, Mariko Nagai, Naomi Kojima, Ann Slater, Ellen Yaegashira, and Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu of SCBWI Japan for their editorial feedback and support. Thanks to Liane Wakabayashi for her wonderful map of Kai’s town, which helped me visualize his world. Gratitude above all to my agent extraordinaire, Kelly Falconer, and to Phoebe Yeh for her belief in me and for shepherding this book out into the world with her brilliant editing. More thanks to my stellar team at Crown Books for Young Readers—Rachel Weinick for editorial assistance, Alison Kolani and Renée Cafiero for crackerjack copyediting, Deanna Meyerhoff, who asked about 9/11, and designers Ray Shappell and Heather Kelly. I would also like to thank SCBWI for awarding this book a work-in-progress honor at a crucial stage.
Without a strong home base from my husband and son, I would still be huddled in the corner, terrified. Thank you for drawing me out with your light, bravery, and love.
—Leza Lowitz, March 11, 2014
Leza Lowitz’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Japan Times, Shambhala Sun, Asian Jewish Life, and Best Buddhist Writing of 2011. She has published over seventeen books, including the APALA Award–winning YA novel Jet Black and the Ninja Wind, which she cowrote with her husband, Shogo Oketani, and the bestselling Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By. Most recently, she is the author of a memoir, Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras.
Her awards include the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature; a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award; the PEN Josephine Miles Award for Poetry; grants from the NEA, the NEH, and the California Arts Council; the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University; the Benjamin Franklin Award for Editorial Excellence; and an SCBWI Work-in-Progress Honor for Multicultural Literature.
Leza, an American, lives in Japan with her husband. You can visit her online at lezalowitz.com.
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