In Japan, a seaside mayor rebuilds his life by rebuilding his town

[AsahinaKimi]

Tatsuro Kumagaya, 78, began rebuilding his tiny Rikuzentakata home two days after the tsunami struck Japan. (Tom Miyagawa Coulton, For The Times / May 17, 2011)

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Rikuzentakata, Japan— Futoshi Toba arrived at the hillside Buddhist temple just after dawn, hours before the other mourners, on the April day he bid farewell to his wife, Yumi.

He found the small urn containing her ashes among a solemn sea of containers for the 1,500 residents of Rikuzentakata who died in Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Toba, 46, laid a white chrysanthemum next to his wife's remains. He said a brief prayer, and made her a promise.

Holding back tears, he vowed to raise the couple's two young sons to become good men. "I swore I would do the best job I could in rebuilding this town," he said later, "but I said this place would never be the same without her."

Toba is mayor of the town of 23,000 in northern Japan, a job he took barely a month before an unstoppable wall of water turned the seaside community into a wasteland of shattered lives and scattered wreckage.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-rebuild-20110517,0,207060.story