By Richard Lloyd Parry, from Ghosts of the Tsunami, which was published this month by MCD. Parry is the Asia editor of the Times of London. On the afternoon of Friday, March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake occurred off the coast of northeastern Japan, generating tsunami waves and killing nearly 16,000 people.
Naomi lived with four generations of her husband’s family in the village of Yokogawa. The house’s oldest occupant, her husband’s grandmother, was 101; Naomi’s younger daughter, Sae, was two and a half. At the moment of the earthquake, Naomi was in Sae’s bedroom putting the girl to sleep.…