he March 2011 earthquake and tsunami changed Hiroki Endo’s life in what he calls the most unimaginable way possible. It swept away his home in the town of Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, as well as his father, who remains unaccounted for.
Endo does not live his life entirely in despair over his loss, however. Now a university student, the 20-year-old said he welcomes the changes he has experienced. The calamity, he said, opened his eyes to the virtue of what he used to take little notice of: the importance of human bonds.
“I am still alive today thanks to all the support I got from all around the world.
“I’ve lost everything — my home and my possessions. But these losses hardly bother me, now that I’ve realized human bonds are what matters most in my life.”
Endo, who was 16 years old at the time the disaster struck, now studies electrotechnology at Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo.
He occasionally travels back to Minamisanriku. But after four years, he said no true recovery has taken hold in his hometown. Granted, he said, layers of soil have been added each year to raise low-lying districts that were submerged in the disaster, making them habitable again. The bulk of the debris is gone, too.
But despite these physical changes his hometown, he said, remains essentially barren and displays no sign of human inhabitation, with many locals shunted into limbo in temporary housing complexes.
“The disaster was just too huge,” Endo said. “It made my hometown an entirely different world.”
Endo himself is moving on. The engineering major said his dream is to repay the kindness he received in the aftermath of the tsunami by helping to improve energy infrastructure in underprivileged parts of the world.
“If an earthquake strikes us again, it will be my turn to do people good and help them. That’s how I feel now.
“In a way, I owe the disaster for who I am today. And I am proud of what I have become.”