LV Native Survives Japan's Tragic Tsunami

Andras Molnar is a Lehigh Valley native with a gift for exotic languages like Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. After graduating from college, he decided to teach English in Japan for a few years. I've always loved Japanese culture, so I was instantly jealous.

His parents - Jane and John Molnar - regularly brought me "samurai sword" letter openers after their visits over the last two years, along with Japanese candy and other treats. I's share them with my grandson, who always uses one of the swords to open letters addressed to him. In fact, he recently told me Japan is the one country he'd most like to visit himself.

After the tsunami hit, I was reluctant to contact Jane and John, who probably had no idea whether their son was still alive. A few days ago, Jane told me Andras is fine but won't be coming home. On the day the tsunami hit, he was at a graduation ceremony at his school. He had intended to ride his bike home along the coast, but instead relaxed with faculty.

Another teacher who left immediately and hopped on her bicycle was never seen again.

This is Andras' story.

"My name is Andras Molnar, an English teacher currently working in Yamamoto, Japan, which is a coastal town in southern Miyagi Prefecture, an area recently affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

"On March 11, when the largest earthquake in the history of Japan rocked all of northern Honshu, I was sitting in the staff room with the rest of the faculty at Yamashita Junior High School after the graduation ceremony for our 9th graders who are becoming high school students in April. Suddenly, the entire room started shaking violently, and we all took cover under our desks. Printers, computers and everything else imaginable flew off shelves, and we took a chance to run outside during a lull in the shaking. After several after-shocks, some teachers decided to go check on their homes and families, only to return 10 minutes later with reports of a tsunami surging through town.

"Shortly thereafter, people from town started coming to my school to seek shelter after the disaster. As a designated disaster shelter site, my school had been structurally reinforced to withstand heavy earthquakes, but even with the reinforced design there were many structural damages due to the sheer magnitude of the tremors. Over the next several hours and into the night, people appeared at school in soaking wet clothing having crawled out of their cars and ruined houses in 20 degree weather. That was the end of day one.

"Over the next several days, my school dealt with food shortages, freezing weather, and the sheer emotional impact of mothers searching for children and families searching the ruined remains of their houses for usable items, if their houses had not been completely washed away by the ocean. Without electricity or running water, faculty and volunteers helped the elderly go to the bathroom, students took turns cleaning bathrooms and carrying buckets of rain water from the pool to flush the toilets; people helped people survive.

"Among all this, on March 13 the nuclear power plant in Fukushima suffered a serious system failure and started leaking radiation into the air. My town is 40 miles north of the reactor, putting it outside the Japanese recommended evacuation limit of 18 miles, but inside the international recommended limit of 50 miles. It is still undetermined if there is an actual affect on my community, but due to gas shortages and people having nowhere else to go, the vast majority of people are staying in town.

"On March 17, I made the decision to leave my town and friends to seek shelter in Tokyo, which was the hardest decision I ever made in my life. I did not want to leave the community that had given me so much and the students who I had taught for the past 2 years, but the danger of fallout was too great. Because the train station in town was washed away by the tsunami, I hitchhiked 45 miles to Sendai City, the largest city in northern Japan, and managed to catch a bus sponsored by the Australian Government to evacuate foreign nationals. I safely arrived in Tokyo on March 18th, and am currently living with a Japanese friend and his family.

"Over a quarter of my town was washed away, at least a quarter of the remaining has to be condemned, and the death toll is unknown. I lost 2 students, and 15 are still unaccounted for. The food situation has stabilized with the arrival of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, but schools will remained closed as the people currently living in them have no place to go. Water service will not be restored for at least a month, and reconstruction will take years. Despite all this, people want to move forward.

"I am setting up a fund to aid for the reconstruction of Yamamoto. My primary concern is students, and the money I hope to collect would go to reconstruction of the schools, textbooks, and uniforms for children that lost everything in the tsunami. I am collecting money in both the United States and Japan with the help of Rotary International, which has set up a special account designated specifically for Donations to Yamamoto. The Central Bucks Rotary Club in Doylestown, PA and the Koshigaya Higashi Rotary in Saitama, Japan are the Rotary Clubs that agreed to help me. Please open your hearts and give a donation to my town."

You can contact Andras at androman85@gmail.com. Donations by check can be made out to Central Bucks Rotary with a note letting them know the donation is for the Yamamoto Fund. Send checks to Central Bucks Rotary, c/o Eric Lepping, 41 Eastwoods Circle, Doylestown PA 18901. Andras has a PayPal link, but it is not working.