While in Crescent City with a delegation of educators and students from sister city Rikuzentakata, Japan, Kiyoshi Murakami gave the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors an update on his city’s resurgence following a devasting tsunami that struck in 2011.As the mayor of Rikuzentakata’s special representative, Murakami has crisscrossed the Pacific Ocean numerous times while the sister-city relationship with Crescent City gained momentum.He shared images from a slideshow of Rikuzentakata before the tsunami of 2011. The harbor town had a population of 24,246, a shoreline pine forest of 70,000 trees, and beaches that attracted one million tourists per year.#placement_573654_0_i{width:100%;max-width:550px;margin:0 auto;}var rnd = window.rnd || Math.floor(Math.random()*10e6);var pid573654 = window.pid573654 || rnd;var plc573654 = window.plc573654 || 0;var abkw = window.abkw || '';var absrc = 'https://ads.empowerlocal.co/adserve/;ID=181918;size=0x0;setID=573654;type=js;sw='+screen.width+';sh='+screen.height+';spr='+window.devicePixelRatio+';kw='+abkw+';pid='+pid573654+';place='+(plc573654++)+';rnd='+rnd+';click=CLICK_MACRO_PLACEHOLDER';var _absrc = absrc.split("type=js"); absrc = _absrc[0] + 'type=js;referrer=' + encodeURIComponent(document.location.href) + _absrc[1];document.write('');Then, a 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11, 2011.“The buildings were constructed to withstand the earthquake, (but) not a 5.5-meter-high tsunami or higher,” Murakami said.He said his community’s residents, thinking they were safe once the quake was over, had just 30 minutes’ notice to escape the tsunami.Within four minutes after it hit, the city was completed swamped by the tsunami. The height of the surge, he said, was 55.77 feet.Nearly 1,760 lives were lost, 13,500 people displaced and 4,047 homes destroyed.Murakami shared a photo of a lone pine tree that remained standing. “One pine tree was left, which became the city’s symbol of resilience and reconstruction,” Murakami said. “The whole northern area of Japan uses the tree as a symbol of reconstruction.”After years of rebuilding, 671 people still live in temporary housing, significantly fewer than the 2,148 households in temporary housing following the disaster.Rikuzentakata’s transformation was integrated into a basic concept for redevelopment, Murakami said. “We wanted to build it back better than it was before, make it a ‘resilient city,’ to be strong against any type of disaster.”So Rikuzentakata’s leadership integrated “resilient city” into its business development strategy, emphasizing inclusiveness and accessibility to ensure no one gets left behind in the rebuilding.Murakami said that mindset was recognized by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and adopted by all of Japan in July of this year.In addition, the motto of inclusiveness and accessibility was honored by the United Nations in 2015. Murakami said it played into the UN’s own 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which is a universal call to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by the year 2030.Rikuzentakata’s reconstruction efforts have included a Tsunami Memorial Park with a replanted pine forest of 40,000 trees, as well as relocating residential areas to higher ground, and re-elevating almost the entire city by some 30 feet.Next, Murakami shared an image of the “Kamome,” a high school training boat actually captured in a photo as it was floating away in the harbor’s flotsam. That boat would be found two years later by Del Norte High School students in Crescent City.From the effort to return the boat to Japan through a number of fundraising ventures, an exchange program was developed between Del Norte and Takata high schools in 2013. That program achieved an official Sister School designation in 2017.The first delegation from Crescent City/Del Norte County flew to Rikuzentakata in February 2018. A Rikuzentakata delegation returned the favor, traveling to Crescent City that April to attend an official sister-city ceremony. Rikuzentakata hosted an official ceremony of its own in June 2018.A group of Japanese teachers first visited here in January 2019. And a local business delegation went to Rikuzentakata in July. Murakami said the business discussions targeted fisheries projects, educational exchange programs and tourism-boosting efforts.“We have strong hope for the future with both communities,” he concluded. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('ad-1515727'); });