SEQUIM — Izumi Noda chokes up when she talks about the March 11 quake and tsunami that threatened the lives of her friends in Sendai, Japan.
She and her husband, Sequim native Owen Blake, were visiting family in Kyoto some 360 miles southeast of Sendai when a magnitude 9.0 temblor shook the countryside and a deadly tsunami swept in to shore.
The earthquake reminded her of the magnitude 7.2 quake that hit Kobe, Japan, near her family’s home in Kyoto in 1995.
“I remember it and stuff falling on my bed,” Noda said.
That is why she and her husband are working hard to keep alive the memory of thousands of quake and tsunami victims while raising money to benefit the survivors directly.
The Sequim couple are promoting an April 23-24 disaster relief fundraising party at Carrie Blake Park’s Guy Cole Convention Center called “Hope for Japan.”
Dancing and a silent auction will raise money for the Japanese Red Cross.
Immediately following the quake in Sendai in the Miyagi Prefecture, the two sent text messages home to let Sequim-area family members know they were OK.
They then turned to contacting Noda’s friends in the Sendai area but had trouble getting through because of massive power outages caused by the damage.
One of her friends, a cardiologist, worked 20-hour shifts and could not bathe for a week, she said.
He witnessed not only severe injuries, but also hunger and thirst, since there wasn’t enough food or water for all.
“Many would show up at the hospital with heart trouble,” in part because, without public transportation, many people had walked for miles and seen the devastation, she said.
The National Police Agency of Japan has confirmed 13,498 deaths, 4,916 injured and 14,734 people missing across 18 prefectures and more than 125,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.
Blake, the great-grandson of Carrie Blake — who donated the land that became the city of Sequim’s biggest park — and Noda, a 1998 Peninsula College graduate who has acted as a translator for the filming of two movies in Japan — “The Last Sumarai” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” — mentioned that coincidentally, they had their wedding reception April 23 — the day their fundraiser kicks off.
The 2004 reception took place six years ago at Carrie Blake Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden shortly after the couple were married in Kyoto.
They met in Port Angeles through a mutual friend.
“It’s nice to use her talents and my music to help people around Japan,” Blake said.
He will bring out his entire sound system and put on a light show for the fundraiser that already has more than 50 sponsors who have donated silent-auction items.
Blake also is known as DJ OB1, a dance musicologist who will put on the recorded music for an all-ages dance at 7 p.m. April 23 at the park’s convention center.
“Our purpose is to not only raise money, but to also let these people know that they are in our thoughts . . . that they are not forgotten,” Blake said.
The couple told the Sequim City Council of their event Monday night, and Mayor Ken Hays voiced support for their efforts.
The city donated the Guy Cole center space for the event.
Donations also will be accepted for animal shelters in the affected areas. Like their human counterparts, domestic pets were left homeless and hungry following the quake.
Noda also has promoted the event on her Facebook page and has interpreted emails she has received that give first-person survivor accounts of the devastation and its impact on their lives.
Noda provided her translation of one friend’s long March 29 email:
“We are having a very sad cherry blossom season here,” wrote her friend.
“I am sorry I cannot write anything positive . . . We have aftershocks every day here in the Kanto area [near Tokyo].
“We have to live in fear of eating vegetables and drinking water that might have been contaminated with radiation, especially when thinking of the effects on children.”
The writer mentions power shortages and severe psychological damage to the victims.
Noda said the people of Kobe and Kyoto rose from the destruction of the 1995 quake, and she believes that will also happen in Sendai and the surrounding area, thanks to the help and generosity of others around the world and on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“Kobe got restored because of all the money that they got,” Noda said.
“They realized that they were not forgotten and that they were supported from all over the world.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
