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- Nobuo Inoue helps out at Kumamoto Lutheran Church and the shelter.
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- Pastor Yoichi Sugimoto shows some of the damage at Kumamoto Lutheran Church. While not immediately a dangerous situation, this damage can easily become worse.
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- Mashiki town, just east of Kumamoto city, was the epicenter of the April 14 quake and hit again in the April 16 one. Out of some 5,400 homes or buildings that suffered some kind of damage (50 percent of the town), more than 1,000 were completely destroyed.
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- The middle school building at Kyushu Gakuin, one of two Lutheran middle/high schools in Kumamoto.
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- In mid-April 2016 Kumamoto, Japan, experienced two powerful earthquakes, magnitude 6.5 (April 14, 9:26 p.m., a foreshock) and magnitude 7.3 (April 16, 1:25 a.m., main earthquake). In between these two and for weeks after, hundreds of aftershocks kept shaking the region. The death toll was 49, but damage was extensive, even in what typically are earthquake-resistant buildings.
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- Some 25,000 buildings were deemed unsafe for occupancy, leaving many homeless.
Nobuo Inoue’s home was fine after the first earthquake on April 14, 2016, in Kumamoto, Japan. However, the second, principal quake that hit during the early hours of April 16 made his house totally unstable. “I don’t know how I got out,” remembered Inoue. “The power had gone out and somehow I escaped my house. If there was any sign of hope, (it was that) the cross I had hanging in my entrance way remained.”
A construction professional, Inoue was called by Motoi Koizumi, pastor of Kengun Lutheran Church, to help repair damage at their congregation after the earthquake. “I felt so alone after escaping my house that I came right to church,” Inoue said.
Now Inoue lives in his car and receives his meals at the church. Kengun has housed as many as 40 people whose homes became inhabitable after the earthquakes and is serving meals to others whose livelihoods have been disrupted.
In gratitude for what his congregation has done to help him, meanwhile, Inoue said that if he can safely re-enter his house, he would want to take in those who remain homeless.
In the meantime, though, he wants to also move on from the devastation and begin to rebuild: “I don’t want to see another photo of the damage done in the area.”
Lutheran Disaster Response is working with ELCA partner organizations and the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church to help those affected by the earthquake. Learn more at ELCA.org/ldr.
