With everything Japan has to battle right now – the sea quake, tidal wave, a possible nuclear fall-out as well as warnings about a volcanic eruption on Kyushu – I wonder how much a nation can take.
From Facebook I have learned of siblings gone missing, such as former Frankfurt International School (FIS) students. My thoughts are with all the Japanese families who have come through Oberursel and FIS. I have heard from one former adult student that she is safe and both her college-age children have decided to leave Tokyo and return home to Aichi prefecture for now.
Another former FIS student and her family are still looking for the brother, gone missing in Sendai.
So many lives have been touched and/or come undone in this disaster-stricken time.
My first thought immediately went to late January 1995, the time after the Great Hanshin Earthquake (a.k.a. the Kobe earthquake). While holding our one-year old in my arms, I watched the NHK channel run lists of people who had perished in the big earthquake. I often saw the same name mentioned five, six, seven times in a row. The age given behind each name was conclusive enough to see that in each case, two or three generations of one single family had been wiped out.
In Kitakyushu, we had felt only a very slight tremor. But so many Kyushu residents had family, or friends, or somebody gone missing in and around Kobe.
My thoughts are with you, the people of Japan.