Japan earthquake and tsunami: the man who floated out to sea on his house remembers the tragedy

“I thought we would be safe up there, but it all went black and I was
under the water,” he said. “I was terrified. I couldn’t see
anything. I tried to swim.”

Suddenly, his head broke the surface and he reached out for anything to cling
on to.

“I swam towards the roof,” he said. “I didn’t feel the cold,
but I just needed something to hang on to. It took me four attempts to haul
myself up onto the roof.”

Yuuko, 61, was swept away and killed.

“I was washed out to sea and in the night all I could hear was the
grinding of the debris in the water around me,” he said. The next
morning, he balanced on the unstable roof and waved at six helicopters as
they passed overhead, but none of them saw him.

“Each time they passed me by, I laughed out loud,” he said.

Shinkawa could see the mountains of his native Fukushima Prefecture on the
horizon to the west and tried to paddle towards land, but the waves became
more violent and he had to lay flat on his 15-foot-square roof so that it
did not tip over.

By sunset, he had only one more energy drink left, his throat was parched and
the skin on his hands and face was turning white from exposure to the salt
water. He wrapped himself in a sodden blanket to try to keep warm through
the night.

“I thought about my family that night and how I wanted to be at home with
them again,” he said. “That is all I thought about.”

The next morning, the current had brought him close to the Fukushima Dai-Ichi
nuclear plant and he heard the first explosion in the reactors and saw the
plume of smoke rising into the air.

He gathered a floating helmet, a scarf, some pens and a radio – which did not
work – from the water around him, but was unable to find anything to eat or
drink.

More helicopters missed his increasingly frantic gestures for help and he
admits his spirits sank when a warship passed relatively close but never
spotted him.

A short time later, the boat returned and he caught its attention with a red
rag attached to a long pole that he waved above his head.

“The ship slowly turned towards me and they started flashing a light in
my direction, so I knew that they had seen me at last,” he said. “The
taste of that first drink they gave me aboard the ship was wonderful.”

Since moving to Kawasaki, Shinkawa has not been working but keeps up a
rigorous exercise regime, walking for an hour every morning and evening. He
also writes every day, detailing his experiences and thoughts, both those
that went through his mind when he was a castaway and looking back on the
events of March last year.

“All I want now is to lead a peaceful life,” he said.

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