Did five-month old baby Kazuhito save the whole family?

Kazuhito was a five-month old baby living with his three-year-old brother and parents near the Hanshin line’s Fukae station when the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hit the city. His mother Mayumi still recalls that morning clearly.

It was just half past five when Kazuhito began to cry and woke the whole family in the early morning. I was preparing milk in the kitchen as he looked hungry, and my husband was taking care of our elder son who had wet the bed. Then the earthquake struck. We just didn’t know what happened, but I bent over the baby to protect him, put a futon over us, and the four of us stuck together until the tremors stopped.

Photo: Mayumi Sakoda saying, “Five-month Kazuhito woke us all that morning.”

Their TV was turned in a different direction, and everything supposed to be on shelves fell to the floor; the family’s house became so messy in a blink of an eye that there was not even any room to stand. “I had absolutely no idea what had happened,” recalls Mayumi. Because she was desperately afraid of being inside, her family evacuated to a nearby elementary school and slept outside that night with the baby for the first time in her life, managing to make it through the day.

My oldest son was already three, and he seemed to remember the disaster to some extent. He was very much scared of sleeping inside for a while. I think we survived because all of us were awake at that moment. Every time we talk about the earthquake, we say, “We might have got hurt if Kazu had not woken us up,” and “Kazu was our savior.”

Photo: A picture of the family dated Jan 15, 1995, taken two days before the earthquake

Photo: Mayumi’s childcare diary for Kazuhito turned into a record of the disaster after January 17. The vivid description shocked him when he read it for the first time

20-year-olds grew up as the city and people recovered from the disaster

Kazuhito of course did not remember what happened that day. It was probably when he was in the higher grades of elementary school that he learned about the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

The disaster appeared in textbooks, and there were always special classes about it around January 17 every year at elementary and junior high school. There was a time that I was told to discuss the earthquake with family members. I remember children gathered in a vacant lot in the neighborhood to give silent prayers to the victims and we had evacuation drills every year on that day.

It was during the summer vacation in 2011, when Kazuhito was in second grade at Higashinada Senior High School that “the disaster” hit home for him. The Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11 of that year. Led by the baseball team coach he respected, he and other team members went to Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture to help people suffering from the disaster.

I went to an elementary school where evacuated people were still living to remove mud. It had been only five months since the earthquake devastated the area. Debris was left all around the towns I saw from the bus going to Ishinomaki. Looking at them made me think that Kobe must have been like this, and then what I had heard about the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake hit close to home for the very first time.

What impressed me the most was that people there mentioned Kobe such as “Oh, did you come from Kobe? Thank you very much,” every time I had opportunities to talk to the locals as a representative of our baseball team.

The experience of being in baseball teams during junior and senior high school led Kazuhito to be interested in the minds of groups and individuals, and he currently studies psychology at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences at university. Last spring, he launched “a project for the 20 year commemoration of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake” with friends from other colleges whom he met at a career seminar for students. He will be collecting donations in January at HATACHI, an event by students in Kansai area, and in February will volunteer in the Tohoku region with “Action,” a student volunteer group. “I have three goals,” the young man says.

The first is to prevent the memory of the earthquake from fading away. Our young generation must learn what happened from the survivors and be their successors. The second goal is to say thanks. Those of us aged 20 grew up as the city and people recovered from the disaster, and we would like to send a message of gratitude via social networks such as Facebook. And finally, what we desperately want to do is to give out our original whistles by January 17, to mark the 20th anniversary of the earthquake.

Project members visited the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution, a facility to communicate disaster experience (in Chuo Ward, Kobe City) and learned from the survivors that what we need in a disaster is “water,” “emergency rations,” “socks” and a “whistle.” Socks were immediately understandable because they can prevent injuries from stepping on debris and broken glass when evacuating. However, a whistle was the most unexpected item.

You need a whistle when you are trapped under debris and have to call for help. Many people can shout loudly right after the disaster happened, but their voices can often be drowned in the noise of the helicopters of rescue teams and press, which was very shocking to know. The act of helping people and delivering the right information hampers the voices of victims…

Therefore, we began to think about giving out whistles, which can be heard even in such noise, to as many people as possible. This might be difficult for college students, but three members and I are making every effort to make this happen, asking for suggestions from staff of the Kobe City Government and entrepreneurs who arecareer instructors.

Photo: Kazuhito talking about the project that he started with friends

Photo: A notebook where he jotted down life lessons heard from many survivors

“I didn’t know what you are trying to do at all,” exclaims the mother. Her face is filled with relief to know the unknown side of her son as a grown-up, which he rarely shows her usually. Tears seem to well up slightly in her eyes as she smiles sweetly and says, “My son is so blessed to meet great people.” Kazuhito ignores her and continues:

I still don’t know what I want to do as a member of society, but it is simply exciting to be a man. To grow up, I seriously think about what I should do while I am a student. People I respect—coaches of the club that I joined at junior high school and the baseball team at high school, many senior students at university, my brother—people I have met have a faith in something, a solid “core” within them. I definitely want to be like them. What’s more, I want to be a man like those whom I have met, who can listen to younger people, and never be arrogant or tell them how to live.

A message from Kazuhito to his mother:Mom,I turned 20 years old! Because you brought me up, I have met many wonderful people. I am really grateful.Kazuhito


(Photographed by Takuya Oshima, interviewed and written by Maki Takahashi)