The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan was a very sad sight to watch unfold. It was also scary to see since my family had a Japanese foreign exchange student in my home back in the early 1980's. Chikako is living in Japan now with her husband and two sweet boys. I was very worried for their safety. Chikako was very kind to email in their time of crisis to let me know she was okay. I wanted to share her two emails with you as it gives insight to what they were going through. May God bless these brothers and sisters of ours and help them find peace and comfort as they rebuild their lives!March 12, 2011
Dear Wendy,
Thank you for your mail. Our family members are all safe. We are living in the middle part of Japan. The earthquake this time occurred in Northern part of Japan, and Tokyo area. So nobody injured or died in our area.
But even though we live apart from the seismic, our area also shook so much. It occurred around 14:00 of Tuesday, I was at work, but was ordered to evacuate because my office is near the beach. My son goes to the nursery near the beach, too. I had to rush to pick him up, but, at that time, we are told that the first wave of Tsunami arrived near our area, my son and I had to stay in the nursery's room under the roof. We were permitted to leave nursery right after the arrival of the first wave of Tsunami, but, we had to evacuate before the arrival of the second wave which comes an hour later. Our area, Tsunami was not too high. But still now, we are under the alert, under the order of evacuation. Our area shook a bit today, too. We feel very awful that the epicenter are getting closer to our area, southern part of Japan. Now we are saving the usage of electricity, so that the power station in our area can send surplus electricity to the northern part of Japan where now black out by the earthquake.
What we worry now is the nuclear power station damaged by this huge earthquake, now people living around the power station are now evacuating because the core of nuclear station started melting and this afternoon a small explosion occurred, and radioactive substances are already leaked out, cesium and other substances are already measured around the station. We are living in a small country compared with Russia. People in Russia evacuated thousands of miles from Chernobyl, but if we evacuate thousand miles, we will be on the ocean (ーー;)
All the news are tragic so much. The news says that more than 300 dead bodies are piled on the beach. There are so many beaches like that situation. More than thousand of people are died and more than thousand people are missing. A few people can get into the area to help suffered people because now the radioactive substances are leaking. Nobody can figure out how many people died, how much damaged right now.
Today, all the TV channel(all !!) broadcast the news about this earthquake, even though our sons want to watch cartoon（*^_^*）
Lastly we Japanese people are very appreciated Mr Obama and U.S. government and all the countries offers rescue. We also thank your thoughtfulness and all the prayers you sent us.
Love and affections,
Chikako Asakawa
March 15, 2011
It's midnight here. Just now, we had big earthquake in the middle of Japan, too. It shook a lot, and very scary. The seismic center are getting closer and closer. Fortunately, radioactive substances haven't reached our area yet because of the wind direction.
Northern part of Japan, there exist few dry cells, batteries, cassette gas, canned foods, and gasoline...etc....I was sending these to the friends and acquaintances in Tokyo, but, now, it getting running out in our area, too, because the factories cannot manufacture them, little amount of gasoline for the truck which carry the materials.
Telephone, mobile phone does not work well now. E-mail is OK. Please watch at and pray for Japan.....
Chikako
