Mt. Lebanon man builds new life in Japan in wake of tsunami
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Matthew Ketchum of Mt. Lebanon, second from right, rests with friends during cleanup in the fishing port of Miyako, Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami March 11. -
Matt Ketchum, home from Japan for the holidays, brought back memories of his brush with death from the tsunami that devastated coastal regions of the country. He stands with scroll art done by the grandfather of a friend, Seiji Shimoyama.
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The YouTube video is hard to watch: A grimy wave rolls over a seawall in northern Japan, slamming through apartment buildings and across wide boulevards, washing away cars -- presumably with people in them -- while faint yelling is heard.
Matthew Ketchum had no choice but to watch, though, standing on a hill that March day 10 months ago in Miyako, just above the roiling tsunami, worrying whether he had climbed high enough to escape it.
The 25-year-old Mt. Lebanon High School graduate was home for the first time in two and a half years over the holidays, visiting his parents, Carlton and Andrea Ketchum.
It was good to be back, but he didn't stay long. He returned to Tokyo last week to work on a memorial exhibition as the first anniversary of the disaster approaches, even as he grapples with his own memories of the tragedy.
More than 20,000 people died in Japan's jagged, isolated northeast coastal communities after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, whose epicenter was about 90 miles from Miyako, and resultant tsunami struck. They crippled the country's infrastructure, triggered meltdowns at three reactors in a nuclear facility and widespread radiation contamination, while destroying the small fishing village in the Taro district of Miyako, where Mr. Ketchum taught English.
Just as 9/11 has become shorthand for the trauma suffered after the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, "3/11," as it is known in Japan, has become the symbol of that country's latest catastrophe in a place whose history and people seem to be defined by disaster, suffering and rebuilding.
Slight, bearded, possessed with a kind of jumpy energy, Mr. Ketchum wonders about that day and whether it was fate -- or just random luck, good or bad -- that saved his life.
Was it bad luck that he happened to be living in an oceanside apartment building -- 100 yards from the seawall -- in an isolated part of Japan when the worst earthquake in nearly a century hit?
Was it good luck that, after he ran outside and heard sirens warning that a tidal wave was approaching, his landlord led him up a hillside to a Buddhist monastery where they were able to escape the wave that flooded the city moments later?
First Published January 8, 2012 12:00 am
