SENDAI, Miyagi Pref.: Memorial prayers were held across the coastal regions of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures in northeastern Japan on Thursday, 10 years after the major earthquake and tsunami left more than 22,000 people dead or missing.

In Yamada, Iwate, 46-year-old photo studio owner Naoto Kon offered a moment of silence with students from a local elementary school, whom he supervises on their way to school.

“I spent the decade thinking about how to make the town a place where the children want to stay in the future,” he said. “I want to show them that adults are working hard for reconstruction.”

In the Arahama district of Sendai, Miyagi, which saw about 180 people die from the disaster, Kahoru Satake, 77, visited a memorial tower engraved with the name of her husband, Yasukatsu.

Rubbing her fingers over his name, Kahoru prayed for him to watch over the living family members.

Yasukatsu, who was 67, was swept away in the tsunami when he was heading for their home to look for Kahoru, after he first led his neighbors to an evacuation center.

“It was a frantic 10 years,” Kahoru said. “Now, I want to tell my husband ‘thank you.'”

A 51-year-old male teacher at a junior high school in Sendai offered a prayer to his students, whose lives were taken at the young age of 19.

He said that the 10 years passed by in an instant.

“It’s not the case that we will find a peace of mind after several years,” he said, teary-eyed. “As a survivor, I want to pass on the lessons to the current children.”

At the former Okawa elementary school in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, 74 students and 10 teachers fell victim to the tsunami. The school building is now undergoing construction to turn it into a disaster memorial.

“What’s important is to not forget,” said Takeru Azuma, 57, who lost his mother in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi. “I hope the children can be at peace.”

Nobuko Higashi, 72, who visited all the way from Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan, to offer prayers, choked up as she expressed pity for the children whose bright futures were washed away by the giant waves.

In the Ukedo district of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, Kazuya Suzuki, 63, offered flowers at the grave of his parents, who died in the tsunami. The district is about 6 kilometers to the north of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which caused triple meltdowns in the aftermath of the disaster.

“The reconstruction of my heart has yet to progress,” said Suzuki, who was working at the nuclear plant at the time of the disaster. “I would have been very happy, had I been able to care for my parents in their old age.”

JIJI Press