On a Friday afternoon in mid-March, 2010 Findlay High School (FHS) graduate Haruka Nakaura was a few minutes into the movie Inception at her home in the Aichi prefecture (state) of Japan.
On screen, Leonardo DiCaprio’s dream world began to crumble. At the same time in real life, Japan was falling apart, too.
“I really didn’t believe it actually happened until my phone started beeping. It was a text from the phone company saying ‘Turn on the TV, earthquake,’” Nakaura said. “It was all a mess. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I saw what happened.”
Nakaura saw reports of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the largest in the recorded history of the country.
But the damage caused by the earthquake was nothing compared to the wake of the tsunami it triggered. The wave washed up to six miles inland, destroying houses, cars and entire cities in its path.
Nakaura lives around 350 miles from the epicenter and only felt a 3.0-magnitude quake.
“We are so lucky,” Nakaura said. “I have friends in Tokyo who had blackouts, so they had no power for a couple hours a day. The trains didn’t work, which is a major transportation in Japan.
“I knew what an earthquake was, but I hadn’t experienced it. I wanted to experience it, actually. But now that I know what it does and I’ve seen the effects, I regret it.”
2010 FHS graduate Kanae Hirayanagi also felt the tremor in Hamamatsu, a city in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan.
“I was in a shopping mall, and I first thought I was feeling dizzy, but it was the earthquake,” Hirayanagi said. “I had to hold onto something.”
After the catastrophe, families and friends clogged the country’s communication systems to try to contact each other.
“I have a few friends in Tokyo and they’re all fine, but they were panicking,” Hirayanagi said. “They were using the social networking systems to tell us, because all the phone lines are closed.”
Now, Japan struggles with radioactive leakage and faces the threat of a nuclear meltdown after reactors failed to cool.
Residents in Tokyo were warned about a week after the quake that the tap water was not safe for infants.
“I’m moving to Tokyo next month, and the water there is contaminated with radioactivity, so I’ll have to watch it,” Hirayanagi said. “Since they announced the contamination, people are buying all the bottled water. Even where I live, it’s always sold out.”
Adding to the confusion are hundreds of aftershocks, several occurring every day.
“There are still aftershocks so it’s still not safe to go to the affected area,” former FHS student Rina Ishikawa said. “But the images they show on the TV of the aftermath make me want to go help them right now.
“The images are devastating and I cannot imagine myself being in that kind of disaster.”
The crisis has prompted a flow of aid from other countries and parts of Japan.
“When I go to the city, instead of street performers, there are so many charities trying to raise money so they can send stuff to the people who were affected,” Nakaura said. “Everyone’s taking part in rebuilding Japan.”
Hirayanagi, however, thinks the country needs more assistance.
“We need more help from all over the world,” she said. “We’re running out of supplies, and we don’t have enough gas to carry the supplies (we have). That’s the biggest problem right now.”
But both graduates have received support from their friends back in America.
“Everyone messaged me after the earthquake, and it was so nice that even people I didn’t know were thinking of me,” Nakaura said. “Because of the messages, I feel like I got through it better.”