Olympic volunteers strive to tell their earthquake stories

RIFU – Atsushi Muramatsu's handmade flyers are the size of a concern card, written successful respective languages. “Welcome to Miyagi Stadium," 1 reads. "The gymnasium adjacent doorway was the largest morgue for tsunami victims.”

Over a decennary aft the monolithic earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, the Tokyo Games were expected to connection a accidental to showcase however overmuch has been rebuilt. They were adjacent billed arsenic the “Recovery and Reconstruction Games," and the Olympic torch relay started from Fukushima prefecture, the bosom of the atomic catastrophe area.

But the coronavirus pandemic means fewer spectators are coming to immoderate of the Olympic events, including shot and baseball, being held here. That leaves immoderate Olympic volunteers having to find their ain ways to recount their experiences to those uncommon fans who walk through, arsenic good arsenic members of the media.

“I judge that residents successful disaster-hit areas privation to explicit gratitude for enactment from overseas, and I besides privation to support delivering a connection that we privation to beryllium remembered,” said Muramatsu, who is serving arsenic a unpaid astatine the Miyagi Stadium media cognition center.

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The stadium has a capableness of 49,000, but due to the fact that of the pandemic, it's 1 of the fewer venues that let up to 10,000 spectators.

Another volunteer, Mieko Onuma, wants to instrumentality the favour to each those who supported the reconstruction by sharing her acquisition with Japanese visitors to Miyagi astatine a storytelling halfway acceptable up adjacent a shuttle autobus station.

“When the catastrophe happened, I was moving arsenic a teacher astatine an simple school. I consciousness a consciousness of work to archer what happened that day, truthful I archer my stories here,” said Onuma.

Toshihiro Umeki, 14, came to spot the shot games with his father, but besides joined Okuma’s storytelling session.

“Back past I was 5 years old, truthful I hardly retrieve the disaster. So it wasn’t similar recalling backmost my memories but alternatively learning caller things,” said Umeki. “There were truthful galore shocking things I didn’t know.”

On March 11, 2011, the magnitude 9.0 quake sent a tsunami that triggered meltdowns astatine the Fukushima atomic powerfulness plant. The catastrophe heavy damaged coastal neighborhoods and took much than 18,000 lives successful all, with astir 10,000 radical killed successful Miyagi prefecture.

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Muramatsu said helium observed hundreds of dormant bodies being cleaned aft their betterment from the ocean, past carried to the gymnasium.

Being exposed to specified scenes each time and proceeding astir the deaths of his friends, Muramatsu said helium felt determination was nary enactment betwixt beingness and death. What motivated him to enactment live was the regular conversations with overseas rescuer workers, who helped assistance people's spirits with a gag oregon a benignant word.

“I privation to walk connected the connection to the adjacent procreation that we person received truthful overmuch enactment from overseas, and we shall ne'er hide that support,” Muramatsu said.

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