The Lost is Found

This 81 year old woman went through a more traumatic experience than most of us could ever imagine. On the day of the earthquake and tsunami, she left her home and tried to seek safe shelter. She made her way to the third floor rooftop of a building where she watched as the tsunami pushed into the first two floors of the building she was in. The nursing home next to the building she was in was completely engulfed and all in it drowned.


As day turned to night, she watched as the sea that was filled with oil from the hundreds of cars that had been tossed like toys by the tsunami became an ocean of fire. She watched as a gas station caught fire and exploded beyond them. She spent 2 days with a handful of other survivors on top of that building before being brought to an evacuation center in a gymnasium. Her son walked the devastated area looking for her. At the evacuation center, she was in shock and couldn't ask her rescuers to help her get to her son. Finally her son found her in the evacuation center and brought her to their new home--the Hotel Boyo. The home that they had lived in was gone. After that she spent 1 month in the hospital getting blood transfusions and recovering from bleeding ulcers and PTSD caused by the stress of her terrible ordeal.


My husband and I had the honor of being with her and her family when they went for the first time to a gymnasium where volunteers had painstakingly gathered many personal items they found after the tsunami. Six months had passed and she never expected to find any traces of the items that had been washed away and burned on March 11th. But as we walked through the hundreds of small items and photos lovingly restored by volunteers, her son suddenly said "Here! Look!" As we gathered around we were all astounded to find there was her father-in-law's memorial plaque. She cried and hugged the plaque saying "You came back to me. You came back to me."


The volunteers had carefully labeled every item they found with a number, the location of where it was found, and the numbers of any other items found at the same location. The woman also found an intact photograph of her 70th birthday celebration. Lost treasures found.