Some, though not all, of our travels change our lives; they cultivate sensibilities, shape values and alter our outlook on things. One such trip I experienced was a sixth-grade school excursion to Hiroshima when, at the Peace Memorial Museum, I saw photographs of people who had suffered massive burns and lost limbs as a result of the Aug. 6, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing of the city. Those photos terrified me so much that I remember bursting into tears.

A visit I made late last month to coastal areas of Iwate Prefecture in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan reminded me of that Hiroshima school trip. In cities and towns along the rugged Sanriku coast, some locals are trying to connect with visitors by sharing their memories of the giant tsunami that roared in from the Pacific following the magnitude 9 Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, instantly taking away many of their family members, friends and neighbors.

On that trip organized by the Iwate prefectural government, I and several other journalists (mostly from vernacular travel magazines) journeyed all the way from the city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate's south, just north of Miyagi Prefecture, to Ninohe, not far from Aomori Prefecture — witnessing awful devastation almost everywhere we went.