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[Mainichi Daily News] Ofunato, Japan – A tire retailer here restarted his business and his life from scratch late last month after he lost his shop, home and mother to massive tsunami triggered by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
Tsuyoshi Niinuma at his temporary workshop in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture. (Photo courtesy of Mainichi Daily News)
Tsuyoshi Niinuma, 64, opened a temporary office and workshop at the same site his shop, Chitose Shokai, had stood until it was swept away by the waves.
"I have no choice but to go ahead, doing everything I can do now," Niinuma told the Mainichi on Aug. 11 as he opened his office in the morning. The nightmare is still fresh in his memory. "A tsunami is coming!" yelled his 41-year-old son, who ran the store with him.
Niinuma rushed out of the store to rescue his 95-year-old mother who was in their home next door, carrying her on his back. He had only taken five or six steps before the tsunami engulfed them. After that, everything was a blur, but when he finally regained his bearings he found they were trapped between their home and shed. After he managed to get his mother out, some neighbors called an ambulance for her.
However, the ambulance never arrived. He could only watch helplessly as his mother lay on the road, her body growing slowly colder.
Niinuma later got irritated whenever he remembered his pre-disaster life. He began drinking, something he'd given up 30 years before. "Things would be far easier if I died," he said to himself.
Shortly after the tsunami, he went to his store – reduced to a skeleton – because he was able to relax there. He pulled his sea water-soaked machines and tools out of the ruins and cleaned them repeatedly.
"I'm alive. People must try hard as long as they're alive," Niinuma says. He gradually became optimistic and enthusiastic about resuming his business.
A prefabricated structure he was building with the help of a carpenter friend was completed on the site of his shop in late July. He uses it as his office, workshop and storage.
The number of contracts he receives now remains relatively small, but he feels enthusiastic when he's handling tires. "I want to work and earn money as long as I can," Niinuma says.
He has no Buddhist altar at the home where he is taking shelter, but he offers flowers to a portrait of his mother. "I have no choice but to ask her to endure this until I rebuild my house," he said before going to work on the morning of Aug. 11.
He is now working hard to put his business back on track and rebuild his house. The backyard of his shop commands a panoramic view of the tsunami-ravaged city, still covered in rubble. When he looks over the devastation, he occasionally feels it would be easier just to stop living.
However, he says, "You can have more pleasure if you have experienced hardships." He is encouraged by smiling disaster survivors who occasionally visit his shop.
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