Surviving the 2011 Tsunami: 100 Testimonies of Ishinomaki Area Survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake

The Asia Bookroom is an amazing resource in Canberra. Recently they hosted an event (28 October 2014) to launch the English translation of a book containing the stories of survivors from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. The launch was moderated by UNSW Professor in Public Sector Management Strategy Deborah Blackman. University of Canberra assistant professor in urban and regional planning Hitomi Nakanishi also spoke about managing the translation work of 16 assistant translators to create the English version of the book, 'Surviving the 2011 Tsunami: 100 testimonies of Ishinomaki Area Survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake'. Takenori Osu (Editorial Director of Japan's publishing company Sanriku Kahoku) and also a tsunami survivor, spoke about his experience with relation to publishing the Japanese version of the book which was published in 2012. Sanriku Kahoku stopped all of its publishing activity on 11 March 2011 - the tsunami was on March 10 - and resumed business on March 14, only 3 days later! The inference the Owl gained from this revelation though was not that this was a cynical action of a money making profiteering company. It truly sounded as though a fast (and smart) decision was made by a man who survived the tsunami and who just happened to be a person of influence in a book publishing company, to begin gathering survivor/survival stories straight away in order to preserve the memories as accurately as possible.