Woman lost mother, gave birth on fateful day

Etsuko Shimosawa lifts Sakura in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, on Feb. 17, as her husband, Hiroki, looks on. (Shingo Kuzutani)

MIYAKO, Iwate Prefecture--To Etsuko Shimosawa, her baby Sakura, born 30 minutes before the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, may be the reincarnation of her late mother she first met only three months before the disaster.

Shimosawa, 33, felt the strong shaking at her hospital on March 11 when her daughter was being weighed and measured. She fled to the rooftop and watched black waves sweeping the city.

The raging tsunami killed her mother, Taeko Kimura, 58, the same day.

Shimosawa’s parents divorced soon after she was born, and she was raised by her father's relatives.

She met Kimura by chance three months before the disaster.

“You are Ecchan, aren’t you?” Kimura asked her at a bus stop in front of Miyako Station. “I’m your mother, Taeko.”

Shimosawa was more pleased than surprised that Kimura remembered and recognized her. She had thought she was abandoned.

Kimura, remarried, was living near the sea.

“When your baby is born in the spring, please come and visit me,” she said.

Shimosawa learned about Kimura’s death from relatives a month after the disaster. She wept that night, holding Sakura in the futon.

In autumn, she visited Kimura’s family.

Kimura’s photographs showed that Shimosawa has her mother’s eyes and mouth.

She was told: “(Kimura) was always smiling, and she was strong-minded.”

Like Kimura, Sakura looks competitive.

Shimosawa’s grief eased a little when she thought that her mother may have been reborn as Sakura.

Shimosawa’s husband, Hiroki, 25, who works at a funeral company, watched a large number of funerals after the disaster.

Not a day has passed without him thinking about the lives given on March 11, when many were lost.

They can be a family today because he, his wife and Sakura all survived the disaster, which seems like a miracle.

A year will soon pass marking the day when 15,854 people were killed and 3,276 more were left missing by the earthquake and tsunami.

At their apartment, Shimosawa, with her husband, watches Sakura walk unsteadily.

She said she wants to live for her baby and herself although she cannot forget about what she lost on that tragic day.