For Now After the Quake - A Father's Journey

On March 11, 2011 the fourth strongest earthquake in recorded history struck Japan. Within thirty minutes a monstrous tsunami pounded her northeastern shores, reducing towns to splinters and leaving 20,000 loved ones dead or missing. Two days later, fifty miles from my family and my home, the reactors at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant began to explode.

For the sake and safety of my two young sons there was no decision to be made. Just get them away from Fukushima. For myself, the choice was much less clear. How can I run away when so people, right down the road, are in such dire need - of food, of shelter, of the helping, caring hands of another human being? The urgency of the moment made it impossible to do both - and left me feeling capable of neither.

In circumstances beyond anyone's imagination those around me quietly endured. From the eerie calm after the shaking stopped and through countless aftershocks, in the face and the aftermath of a 30-foot wall of water, in the infancy of a disaster no one could yet fathom my adoptive neighbors went to task with calm determination and immutable grace, allowing me to begin to truly understand the resilience of the Japanese spirit.

And understand, for better or for worse, just what kind of man I've become.

This book is dedicated to the memory of those lost and the courage of the affected who remain.