19/04 Tsunami scattered slates meant for Tokyo Station

The Yomiuri Shimbun

ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--The March 11 tsunami swept away about 60,000 slate tiles meant to be used for the restoration of JR Tokyo Station and stored at a warehouse in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture.

The claystone slates were scheduled to be used on the roofs of the historic Marunouchi side of the station building. As the reconstruction is scheduled to be completed in March next year, workers collected the slates scattered in the disaster rubble one by one, hoping the station will be completed as scheduled.

East Japan Railway Co., operator of Tokyo Station, announced Friday that it plans to send inspectors to Ishinomaki to determine whether the collected slates are still usable.

Kumagai Master Thatchers Co., a construction company in Ishinomaki that specializes in traditional roofing materials, including those of national treasures and important cultural properties, is located about four kilometers upstream from the mouth of the Kitakamigawa river in northern Miyagi Prefecture.

Tsunami that rushed upstream from Oppa Bay engulfed the company. Sadanori Takeyama, an employee of the company who witnessed the scene from an evacuation center, said in a tone of frustration, "Debris and muddy water continued to sweep the slates away."

The Ogatsu district in Ishinomaki and the neighboring city of Tome are leading slate production centers in Japan. Slates produced in the Ogatsu district were used on the domed roofs of Tokyo Station when it was built in 1914. When the station was rebuilt in 1947, after severe damage in World War II, slates produced in Tome were used on its new, more pyramidlike roofs.

The station is designated a national important cultural property. In the reconstruction now under way, its dome-shaped roofs and other historic parts are to be restored.

It was originally planned that about 30 percent of the slates required for its approximately 8,000 square meters of roof would be domestically produced, with Spanish slates making up the rest.

The Ishinomaki company removed 200,000 slates, each measuring about 30 centimeters by 18 centimeters, from the old roofs. It was reprocessing them in time for the scheduled end of the station's reconstruction in March next year.

However, the tsunami left debris on the company's grounds and scattered the stored slates over a distance of two kilometers. If heavy machinery were used to clear the rubble, the slates would be broken. So company employees had to collect slates one by one by hand. They gathered about 45,000 slates over two weeks and washed the dirt off of them.

Company President Akio Kumagai, 46, said, "We'd like to participate in the reconstruction of the station with these slates and make them a symbol of recovery [from the disaster]."

Some members of Aka-renga no Tokyo Eki o Aisuru Shimin no Kai (Association of citizens who love Tokyo Station with red bricks) based in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, on Friday presented a petition to JR East, including the names of 3,037 members, urging that the slates be used. An official of JR East said, "We'd like to check the slates to see whether they have been affected by seawater or otherwise damaged by the tsunami."

(Apr. 19, 2011)