Stranded for three days after March 11, 2011, with her mother-in-law and young children on the second floor of their home near the industrial port of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Naoko Nakayama fought panic by communicating the only way she could: scribbling on torn scraps of paper.
She wrote about how their toddler was running around the house naked before the shaking started; how their daughter held onto a beam in the upstairs bedroom, wide-eyed, as she listened to the dishes crashing in the kitchen; and how Nakayama herself made desperate plans to use the children's bunk bed as a makeshift boat.
With one eye on the encroaching waves outside the window, she kept jotting things down. The notes were a substitute for what she would say to her husband, as a way to counter her worrying about his safety and that of their extended family and friends.
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