The reunion is a game-changer for a tortured Kobe volunteer: the Asahi Shimbun

Over the years, Hiroshi Uchikura has made sure to send a New Year’s card to Yuka by keeping in touch. But other than that, they haven’t spoken to each other in 25 years.

Then, all of a sudden, I called him. He was dumbfounded.

They last met in 1995 after Oshikura, 51, rushed to the port city of Kobe in the depths of winter as a volunteer to help evacuees after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake devastated the city and surrounding areas on January 17.

The couple decided to meet at an outdoor barbecue spot run by Oshikura’s father in Akirono, a city on the outskirts of Tokyo. It was summer 2020, and Yuka brought her family.

She said, “I am now a mother of three.” “My eldest daughter is the same age I was at the time.”

Yuka is starting to remember the weeks she and her family spent living in a gymnasium while they were evacuated. Uchikura, who was then a final year college student in Tokyo, traveled to Kobe 11 days after the disaster to volunteer his help.

Chaos and tears

He faced a scene of chaos when he reached the prep school he was assigned to. More than 1,000 people without shelter occupied every available space.

The gymnasium walls were filled with sheets of paper that victims had taped to search for evidence of their missing relatives.

Despite the mass of evacuees, Oshikura manages to find a small space he can squeeze near the entrance. It was cold there, but he managed to sleep for 90 minutes or so before returning to work again.

When he burned bits of wood debris in an 18-liter square case, the evacuees began to congregate around them to warm up. Among them was a middle-aged vixen who said she kept her 13-year-old daughter safe when the house began to collapse by putting herself on her body. The daughter was Yucca.

Uchikura hardly remembers what he had talked about with Yuka all those years ago. But he remembers the sense of helplessness he felt while doing his best in the gym to help the evacuees.

The scale of the disaster was difficult to grasp – 6,400 people were killed and thousands more homeless.

A load of blankets was delivered to the gym, but not enough for everyone evacuated.

A city resident still living in a destroyed home stopped to get food aid but had to be deported as there was only enough emergency food for the evacuees there.

The descent was excruciating, and Oshikura couldn’t hold back his tears.

The gallbladder stabilizes

On one occasion, one of the evacuees said to him in a daze, “You can go back to normal life, and we are left behind here.” Touched by the comment, Oshikura replied, “Why would you say such a thing while I’m doing my best?”

Later on, he was horrified about the exchange. He was convinced that being with the victims and sharing their hardships was all he could do.

After a week or so of volunteering, Oshikura is back in Tokyo and his warm and comfortable home. His friends joked about his willingness to help people in need.

He was agonized by the sense of worthlessness that Kobe felt as he adapted to return to an easy life in Tokyo. Oshikura found it difficult to control his emotions, so he tried to suppress his bitter memories of Kobe.

After graduating from college, he got a job, got married and raised a family.

His job kept him occupied and he found he spent less time thinking about his experience in Kobe.

When friends volunteered to help after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region in northeastern Japan or in Kumamoto Prefecture after a strong earthquake, Oshikura simply handed them an envelope with money for the victims. He kept telling himself that his busy schedule did not allow him to rest in the disaster areas.

After Uchikura and Yuka share the latest news of their lives while reuniting at the barbecue site, she tells him something he never expected. She came to see him to express her gratitude for what he had done in Kobe.

“At the time, I was very young and terrified because the evacuees were fighting sometimes,” she said. “But you and other college volunteers worked hard to make the gym as vibrant as possible so that I wouldn’t feel lonely. I always wanted to meet you in person again to express my thanks.”

Her kind words affected him deeply. Suddenly, he felt a tremendous reward for what he tried to achieve in Kobe, after feeling useless for so long.

He said to himself, “I kept asking myself what I could do at the time, and now it turns out that I did something meaningful to someone.”

Uchikura and Yuka cried silently for a while.

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