Williams Lake resident Brian Marshall was one of many Canadians who experienced Japan’s largest earthquake first hand.
Marshall, his three sons and wife were at the tail end of a visit to her parents’ home in the coastal community of Kujukuri when the quake struck off the country’s northeast coast.
At the time, he and his wife Yuriko were picking up their eight-year-old son from school. What happened next was their car started rocking side to side.
Because of the faintness of the swaying, Marshall thought it was Liam, his two-year-old, kicking the back of the car seat.
When the shaking became more pronounced, Marshall said, residents started emerging from their homes. What alerted him and others to the fact this earthquake was different from others that frequently shake the nation was its length and increasing intensity.
Marshall said it felt like the shaking went on for five minutes. The shaking was dampened somewhat by the vehicle the family was in but Marshall said he knew that the quake was “pretty big.”
Once Marshall’s son emerged from the school, the family drove home through streets void of traffic lights. A power outage at home was further confirmation that it was something serious.
Then, a second earthquake rocked the area.
“This time, being in a building, it was easy to tell how big this thing was,” Marshall said in an e-mail written while still in Japan. “Things were shaking all over the place and I was afraid the TV was going to fall over.”
At that point, Yuriko, who grew up in Japan, knew to prepare some items for evacuation, and notice by loudspeaker followed by police knocking on doors confirmed the requirement to abandon the home and move to a nearby evacuation centre, Marshall said.
They spent the night in their local centre listening to Japanese news reports of the devastation that lay beyond its doors. When the all-clear came they returned home the next morning.
Somewhat by design, somewhat perhaps by miracle they returned to an intact house — an inn located only two minutes from the beach — fully operational with all its utility services.
Marshall credits a six-metre high tsunami break that had diverted the water around their neighbourhood.
“We found out that the tsunami had stopped right across the street from us. Thanks to the shape of the area and the break, the tsunami had been almost completely routed around us to the port. The damage to the port was extensive and there were few boats visible there. The majority sunk.”
Marshall said on either end of the break the water extended much further inland. Some water came over the break but not in significant enough quantities to cause major damage.
On March 16 the family returned to Canada.
The airport in Tokyo was no busier than usual, reflected Marshall during a phone interview back in Williams Lake, with the exception of a few extra passengers trying to secure standby seats. Their Japan Airlines flight back to Vancouver was three-quarters full.
Through it all, what impressed Marshall was the citizens’ stoicism in the face of overwhelming disaster.
“They were just saying don’t buy anything more than you need. Don’t go into the store and buy everything.
“Just buy what you need and if everyone does that in a few days everything will get back to normal,” he said, adding as far as he could tell people obeyed that directive.
Gasoline was also parcelled out at $20 to $30 per person per day.
He suspects the action of his brother-in-law, who went to work the following day focussed on getting his company’s supply line back in order after a supplier’s building was destroyed, was indicative of the nation’s spirit.
And he’s grateful.
“We’re just lucky it didn’t touch us.”
