For elderly,echoes of World War II horrors

For the elderly who live in the villages lining the northeastern coast,this is a return to a past of privation their children have never known. Young people have fled,looking for work in the city. The elderly who remained face devastation and radiation contamination,a challenge equal only to the task this generation faced when its defeated nation had to rebuild from the rubble of the war.

In this hamlet of Yuriage,the search for survivors was turning into a search for bodies. And most of those bodies were old too old to have outrun the tsunami.

Yuta Saga,21,was picking up broken cups after the earthquake when he heard sirens and screams of Tsunami! He grabbed his mother and ran to the junior high school,the tallest building around. Saga and his mother found the stairs to the schools roof clogged with older people unable to climb them. Some were sitting or lying on the steps. As the bottom floor filled with fleeing residents,the wave hit.

At first,the doors held. Then water began to pour through the seams and flow into the room. In a panic to reach the roof,younger residents began pushing and yelling,Hurry! and Out of the way! They climbed over those who were not moving,or elbowed them aside.

Then the doors burst open,and the water rushed in,quickly waist-level. Saga saw one older woman,without the strength to stand,sitting in water up to her nose. He rushed behind her,grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up the stairs. Another person grabbed her and lifted her up to another person. They formed a human chain,lifting the older residents and children to the top.

Hisako Tanno,50,was working when the earthquake struck. She rushed home to get her 77-year-old father. As she parked in front of her home,she heard screams. She looked to see a mountain of garbage moving down the street at her. It was the wave. Her neighbours called to her,and she ran up to their second floor. Then she remembered she had left her father.

She could see her house from the window. When the wave hit,it smashed the sliding doors. Then,to her horror,she saw her father swept outside. The water was by now the height of a one-story building. She saw him grab the ironwork on her homes second-story balcony and hold on.

He was trying to pull himself up,but he has a bad leg, she said.

As the water surged,her father was able to somehow hoist himself over the metal railing and onto the balcony. There he held onto for dear life.

I didnt know he had it in him, she said. He wanted so badly to live that he found that last burst of strength.Martin Fackler