March 11, 2011. A powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan; more than eighteen thousand people were crushed, burned to death, or drowned. Parry lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and over six years of reporting he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all: Okawa Elementary School was decimated. Here he tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.
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