One of the most decimated areas in Ishinomaki is the residential and waterfront area named Minato. The elementary school there served as a shelter for 1500 victims, who only had four bottles of water amongst all of them for the first three days after the tragedy. Representative of the hundreds of shelters across Tohoku, the Minato-sho Shelter’s resilient leader and self-sacrificing volunteers helped build a survivor’s community that flourished amongst the destruction like a tiny flower blossoming through a cracked parking lot’s asphalt.

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