In the same essay written by a high school student who described the tsunami as “A wave so big as only seen in the movies,” he says this in wonder of nature: "The stars that night, after the tsunami, were so beautiful. It seemed like the most beautiful night sky I had ever seen. The next morning, I woke up to the sun rise, and it was like the brightness of hope itself.” Likewise another high school boy wrote, “As we moved to third shelter, I looked up at the night sky, and it was the most beautiful sky I ever saw. The moon and stars were so bright in that town without lights.” A high school girl also says in wonder: “Because of the tsunami, the people who had fled to a school then had to climb up a mountain. Together we then ended up spending the night in city hall. The starry sky that night was the most beautiful I had ever seen. It was so beautiful, I could almost forget what had happened to our town and to me."
As if a mega-earthquake of the likes the world rarely sees was not enough, Japan was then quickly hit by a monster tsunami and the meltdown if two reactors in Fukushima.
Maybe like a lot of people after Japan's deadly earthquake in 2011, I found myself thinking about the book's opening chapters, when the luck-less Candide-- along with the syphilitic Pangloss and the sailor from the boat-- were shipwrecked; washing up on Lisbon's shores just moments before the city was struck by the infamous mega-quake of 1755. As if the earthquake wasn't enough, the mega-quake was followed by fires and then a great tsunami that caused the complete destruction of one of the world's greatest cities of the time. Indeed, the human suffering was so terrible that the disaster sparked philosophical and religious debates on the nature of Evil that continued across Europe for a long time afterward; Voltaire's Candide being perhaps among the most famous.
Fast forward almost 250 years after Lisbon to another tsunami.
Claiming over 200,000 lives, the 2004 tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Like Lisbon in 1755 and Japan in 2011, the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami started with an earthquake. For Sonali Deraniyagala, who was in Sri Lanka on holiday, there was no warning, though, no sign of any earthquake. Instead, there was just a wave that came and took her entire family away.
Mother. Father. Husband. And two beautiful boys. In what was just a few minutes, they were all washed away.
In the words of my friend Pranay, Deraniyagala's memoir about what happened is, "simply extraordinary, and it will touch you beyond belief."
Deraniyagala says, "They were my world. how do I make them dead?"
I think of myself as someone who also lost a world and yet to lose one's children...--it is unthinkable.
All of these calamities are unthinkable.
In 2012, I worked on a translation that among other issues, examined something called post traumatic growth. Here is the Download Disaster thinkscience that was then used as a presentation for an academic conference.
Post-traumatic growth examines positive influences in people after terrible disasters. In the case of the translation and the disaster in Japan, it was broken into the following categories: spiritual growth, awareness of life, beauty of nature, and appreciation of life.
The quote at the top (from the translation) has echoed in my heart for years.
I don't have any opinion and images from Fukushima haunt my thoughts.
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Shipwrecked with Voltaire at 3Quarks
Hideo Furukawa's Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima: As we passed from the city center into the Fukushima suburbs I surveyed the landscape for surgical face masks. I wanted to see in what ratios people were wearing such masks. I was trying to determine, consciously and unconsciously, what people do in response. So, among people walking along the roadway, and people on motorbikes, I saw no one with masks. Even among the official crossing guards outfitted with yellow flags and banners, none. All showed bright and calm. What was I hoping for exactly? The guilty conscience again. But then it was time for school to start. We began to see groups of kids on their way to school. They were wearing masks." [Robert Fay's review here]