CEBU, Philippines - Exactly a year ago on March 11, 2011, Japan was brought down to its knees by one of the most catastrophic string of natural disasters the world has ever seen.
Citizens ran to safety as a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Japan. Minutes after the quake, a huge tidal wave made its way into cities—engulfing everything on its way including villages, buildings, ships, and cars.
Today, as the world remembers the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, GMA News and Public Affairs, in partnership with Japan’s TV-Iwate, revisits the places most affected by the tsunami and brings home powerful images of Japan’s devastation and recovery.
George Foster Peabody award-winning journalist Kara David steps into the ghost towns of Iwate and Miyagi prefectures—two of the three prefectures badly hit by the 3/11 tsunami—to document stories of great struggle and triumph in the face of adversities.
In Rikuzentakata City, Kara meets a Filipina whose family lives in a temporary home called “prefabricated housing.” Months after the disaster, the Japanese government provided these temporary homes for families whose houses were washed away by the giant tidal waves.
In Kesennuma City, she meets a group of Filipinas who gathered together to form a makeshift radio station in hopes of disseminating information to affected kababayans at a time when they say information was not within reach.
Not far away, in Ofunato City, Kara talks to Filipinas who were declared “missing” at the height of the disaster. A year after the tragedy, many of them still rely on volunteers and kind souls for aid as they slowly rebuild their lives.
In the Philippines, with wounds still healing from the earthquake that hit the province of Negros last February, and with the memory of Sendong still in the minds of many, Kara brings home stories to prove there never will be a shortage of hope amidst all the chaos.
“Pagsibol ng Pag-asa,” an SNBO special documentary on the aftermath of the Japan tsunami and earthquake, airs tonight, March 11, after I-Bilib on GMA-7. (FREEMAN)