In Japan, sifting through the rubble

Kamihachi, Japan — Meguni Sasaki, right, and her husband Satoru Sasaki, both 36, return to their neighborhood to collect what few possessions they can find after the devastating earthquake and tsunami. One of the items was a couch. “This used to be in our living room,” said Meguni Sasaki. “It was so expensive.” Satoru located the second floor of their home about a quarter of a mile away from its original location, where they also found a couch and a few possessions. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Kamihachi, Japan — Meguni Sasaki, left, talks to her cousin, Kouno Takayaki, right, whom she hadn’t seen since the tsunami hit two weeks ago. She shows him some of the few items she has been able to recover from the family home after the tsunami swept it away. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Kamihachi, Japan — “There is nothing left,” says Meguni Sasaki, as she scans the ground looking for remnants of her home, swept away by the tsunami. Sasaki and her husband Satoru Sasaki were not at home when the tsunami struck; their two daughters escaped with grandparents to a nearby mountain temple. The roof of another temple landed near their property, moved there by the giant wave.

KamihachiI, Japan — A photograph of daughter Yua Sasaki, 9, on a school field trip, and a bowl are some of the few possession Meguni Sasaki and her husband Satoru Sasaki were able to find after the tsunami destroyed their home and neighborhood. Satoru says photographs of his two daughters are all he is hoping to find. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

One family searches through the remains of their seaside home, hunting with calm resolve for any surviving possessions. It’s an experience shared by countless others.

March 27, 2011
By John M. Glionna
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Kamihachi, Japan— Megumi Sasaki was looking for the white bicycle helmet.

Working patiently, a flock of seabirds nagging incessantly overhead, the 36-year-old mother of two sifted through the rubble of the only home she had ever known, taken from her by the devastating wave that swallowed this seaside community on March 11.

She had bought the helmet for her daughter Sara’s seventh birthday. But she had hidden it in a family car swept away by the tsunami that rolled across northeast Japan on the heels of a killer magnitude 9 quake.

Both the helmet and the car were missing, like so many other possessions.

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