2011/03/30
Tomomi Odajima, with daughters Yu, 4, left, and Yua, 3, at her parents' home in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture (Yasunori Sakamoto)
The damaged one-story apartment building where Odajima and her two daughters barely escaped death after the tsunami struck March 11. (Yasunori Sakamoto)
YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--After the water rose above her head, Tomomi Odajima could feel her young daughters kicking their feet desperately.
"You're in pain. I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Odajima begged for forgiveness in a voice that would not reach the two children.
As she desperately gulped what little air was left in her tract, she prepared to die. "If we're going to die, I don't want us to be separated. I won't let you go."
She tightly clutched her daughters, Yu, 4, and Yua, 3, one more time and thought to herself, "Please let us go in peace."
Days later, Odajima was resting comfortably away from the destruction wrought by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami--and appreciating the small, simple things in life.
"More than anything, Yu and Yua are next to me. Thanks to being alive, I can say I love you all. Thank you," Odajima, 28, wrote recently on an Internet chatroom entry.
The Odajimas' ordeal began at 2:45 p.m. on March 11, when her cellphone rang with an unfamiliar ring tone.
As Odajima read the message on the screen, "Emergency quake warning: Prepare for strong tremors," the shaking started.
With her husband, Munefumi, 31, at work, Odajima ordered the youngsters to take cover under the kotatsu electric foot warmer-cum-table.
Rice bowls crashed into the sink. Glasses and dishes splintered into shards that flew across the floor.
When the rocking subsided, the two children clung to Odajima. The mother looked out the window and saw a large crack in the parking lot. In the background, the public announcement speakers were blaring: "A tsunami is approaching! Please evacuate!"
Her worried mother in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, called. Then a neighborhood friend phoned. Odajima ventured out from the one-story housing complex to see what was happening.
She thought she was seeing an illusion. The sea, framed by two houses, appeared to be growing to a height between the first and second floors of the buildings.
Odajima then shouted to her friend on the cellphone, "Tsunami!"
Jamming her phone in her pocket, Odajima ran back to the house as she heard homes crumbling in the approaching wave.
When she gathered her two daughters, she noticed that the road she had just left was flooded.
In her home, windows creaked and cracked from the pressure of the water. Seawater flooded in.
She thought about escaping through the window on the opposite side of the house, but water was gushing in from that side, too.
The bottom part of the front door started to bend inward, and the water quickly rose above Odajima's boots.
"Mommy, it's cold!" Yu cried.
Realizing the water level would soon reach the height of her two children, Odajima held them up as high as possible. But soon, she felt her boots fall off her feet and her feet leave the floor.
The water neared the more than 2-meter-high ceiling. It had completely submerged the heads of the mother and two daughters.
"We're going to die so soon. What a short life. And to think that we're going to die like this," Odajima thought to herself.
She closed her eyes and held her children for what she thought would be the last time.
After a lapse of unknown length, Odajima sensed through her eyelids that it had suddenly become brighter outside.
She thought she was hallucinating from a lack of oxygen, and she started to lose consciousness.
But the outside light kept getting brighter.
She opened her mouth and found she could breathe. When she opened her eyes, she saw the room was a mess but her feet were once again on the floor.
Bewildered, she looked down to see her children still under her arms. Yu was in a daze, while Yua was coughing.
After snapping Yu out of trance, Odajima carefully placed the two girls on top of the toppled refrigerator.
"We must stay alive. We must get out of here," Odajima told herself. Pulling Yu's hand and cradling Yua, she ran up a hill. Once reaching higher ground, she looked back and saw houses in the neighborhood being tossed around by the water.
On March 13, the three were reunited with Munefumi at an evacuation shelter set up in the Yamada High School gymnasium. The father hugged each of his daughters.
Yua celebrated her third birthday the same day, and when the clock struck 1:10 a.m., the time of the girl's birth, Odajima repeatedly kissed the sleeping girl on both cheeks.
After spending several days in the shelter, the mother and two daughters moved to the home of Odajima's parents in Hachinohe.
When she finally got a chance to use a computer, she found countless inquiries from friends wondering what happened to the mother of two.
Odajima wrote her replies beginning with the words: "You know, the simple things in everyday life are probably the most precious. I once thought we were goners, but we are now here, living, eating warm meals, sleeping with our legs stretched out.
"More than anything else, Yu and Yua are next to me."
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