Tamiko Nimura is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Among other places, her work has appeared in Kartika Review and Discover Nikkei. She is working on a generational memoir about her Japanese American father and a novel about her Filipina American mother. Occasionally, she blogs at Kikugirl, her “own private MFA” (http://www.kikugirl.net ).
It’s hard to forget the images of terrifying walls of water rushing over buildings, carrying cars as if they were feathers; it’s hard to forget seeing miles of debris stretching out to the horizon. And yet just a few years after the disaster, survivors of Japan’s Great Earthquake and Tsunami were worried that they would be forgotten.
“Catastrophic” is not the word a mother wants to hear upon her daughter’s birth.