Ghosts of the Tsunami

July 31, 2017
British journalist Lloyd Parry (People Who Eat Darkness) sheds more light on the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami off Japan’s northeastern coast, focusing on fatalities in the small coastal community of Okawa. Lloyd Parry notes that the disaster caused “the greatest single loss of life” in the country since the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki and triggered a meltdown
of three plutonium reactors in the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station, “the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.”
He calls attention to Okawa Primary School where scores of students and teachers perished and describes how Okawa’s residents coped in the aftermath. He introduces readers to some of the parents of the hundreds of youngsters who died and traces the villagers’ determined search efforts: “Almost as carefully as the bodies, they retrieved and set aside the distinctive square rucksacks, carefully labelled with name and class, which all Japanese primary schoolchildren carry.” Later chapters deal with political fallout and resultant lawsuits, as numerous questions are raised about evacuation procedures, which parties were responsible for the deaths, and the proper ways for families to grieve their losses. Six years after the tsunami, the magnitude of the catastrophe remains difficult to fully grasp, but Lloyd Parry makes some sense of a small part of it.

July 15, 2017
Pensive travels in the wake of one of the world's most devastating recent disasters, the Tohoku earthquake of 2011.As Parry (People Who Eat Darkness, 2012, etc.), Tokyo bureau chief of the Times of London, writes, Japan is readier than any other nation for disaster, especially earthquake. Tokyo buildings are meant to stand up to shaking, even if they're highly flammable, and Japanese citizens have been drilled and know what to do. So, too, the author: "I had lived in Japan for sixteen years," he writes, "and I knew, or believed that I knew, a good deal about earthquakes." Yet, when the seafloor started shaking off the northeastern coast of Honshu on March 11, 2011, only a few experts could foresee what would soon unfold: the destruction of the nuclear reactor at Fukushima, the landfall of a wall of water 120 feet high, and a wave of death as people struggled to find safety on higher ground. An enterprising journalist, Parry visited the devastation in the immediate aftermath, and he recounts his experiences among grieving and dazed residents, many of those survivors having lost children as schools were swallowed up in seawater. The author's narrative is appropriately haunted and haunting. One memorable moment comes when he describes someone brought back from the brink of madness by a perhaps unlikely method: namely, being sprinkled with holy water and thus freed from the hold of "the dead who cannot accept yet that they are dead." Parry's set pieces come to have a certain predictability: expert-victim-expert-survivor. Yet they retain their urgency, for, as he writes, it won't be long before another earthquake of similar or even greater intensity strikes Tokyo proper, with its millions of inhabitants; in that event, "the Nankai earthquake, which might strike at any time, could kill more people than four atomic bombs." A sobering and compelling narrative of calamity.

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Starred review from September 1, 2017
On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake hit Japan: the largest in Japanese history, powerful enough to knock the Earth 10 inches off its axis. Though the Japanese were well prepared for both earthquakes and tsunamis, most did not understand the magnitude of what was to come soon after the quake: a 120-foot-high tsunami, which killed more than 18,000 people. Parry (People Who Eat Darkness, 2012), Asia editor of the Times of London, travels to the rural regions of Japan that were hardest hit, reconstructing the events from the day of the tsunami into the years of recovery that followed. Central to this book is the story of the Okawa Primary School, where an unusual oversight in the school's disaster plan led to the deaths of nearly all the students. Parry follows the parents of the children who diedas well as the few who survivedas they struggle to uncover the mistakes that led to their children's deaths. The stories that Parry gives voice to are not only deeply personal but they are accompanied with essential historical and cultural context that enable the reader to understand the roles of death, grief, and responsibility in Japanese cultureand why some survivors may always remain haunted.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2017

In March 2011, Japan was struck by multiple disasters: an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear catastrophe. Parry (People Who Eat Darkness) specifically focuses on the effects of the tsunami on the severely hit community of Okawa. At the town's primary school, 74 children lost their lives, the most deaths out of all the primary schools in the country. This book follows families from the day the tsunami struck to the present; documenting the momentous lawsuit residents filed against the educational district in order to obtain the truth of what happened at the school. Through numerous interviews with the families and an intimate knowledge of Japanese society, Parry weaves a heart-wrenchingly bittersweet but resilient story. By focusing on one community, he deftly displays the process of grief and bureaucratic sidestepping in addition to the strength that individuals and families showed after the tragedy. VERDICT While other books have focused on the science behind earthquakes and tsunamis, Parry brings a human element to the disaster, perfectly highlighting how narrative nonfiction can shed light on an otherwise unfathomable event for any type of reader.--Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017

As the Asia editor and Tokyo bureau chief of the Times (London), Parry lived through the tsunami that devastated northeast Japan on March 11, 2011. Here he investigates the consequences of the tragedy and the sometimes unexpected ways that the Japanese have responded.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.