FUDAI, Iwate Pref. – In the rubble of the northeast, one small village
stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In
fact, they barely got wet.

Fudai survived thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor’s expensive
folly and now vindicated as the community’s salvation.

The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their
lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and
made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from
the next one.

His 15.5-meter floodgate between mountainsides took a dozen years to
build and meant spending more than \2.4 billion in today’s yen.

“It cost a lot of money. But without it, Fudai would have disappeared,”
said fisherman Satoshi Kaneko, 55, whose business was ruined but is
happy his family and home are intact.

The gate project was criticized as wasteful in the 1970s. But the gate
and an equally high seawall behind the community’s adjacent fishing port
protected Fudai from the waves that obliterated so many other towns. Two
months after the disaster, more than 25,000 are missing or dead in the
Tohoku region.

"However you look at it, the effectiveness of the floodgate and seawall
was truly impressive," current Fudai Mayor Hiroshi Fukawatari said.

Towns to the north and south also braced against tsunami with seawalls,
breakwaters and other protective structures. But none were as tall as
Fudai’s.

The town of Taro believed it had the ultimate fortÅ\a double-layered
10-meter-tall seawall spanning 2.5 km across a bay. It proved no match
for the March 11 tsunami.

In Fudai, the waves rose as high as 20 meters, as water marks show on
the floodgate’s towers. So some ocean water did flow over but caused
minimal damage. The gate broke the tsunami’s main thrust. The two
mountainsides flanking the gate also offered a natural barrier.

The man credited with saving Fudai is the late Kotaku Wamura, a 10-term
mayor whose political reign began in the ashes of World War II and ended
in 1987.

Fudai depends on the sea. Fishermen boast of the seaweed they harvest. A
white-sand beach lured summer tourists.

But Wamura never forgot how quickly the sea could turn. Massive
earthquake-triggered tsunami flattened the northeast coast in 1933 and
1896. In Fudai, the two disasters destroyed hundreds of homes and killed
439 people.

"When I saw bodies being dug up from the piles of earth, I did not know
what to say. I had no words," Wamura wrote of the 1933 tsunami in his
book about Fudai, “A 40-Year Fight Against Poverty.”

He vowed it would never happen again.

In 1967, the town erected a 15.5-meter seawall to shield homes behind
the fishing port. But Wamura wasn’t finished. He had a bigger project in
mind for the cove up the road, where most of the community was located.
That area needed a floodgate with panels that could be lifted to allow
the Fudai River to empty into the cove and lowered to block tsunami.

He insisted the structure be as tall as the seawall.

The village council initially balked.

"They weren’t necessarily against the idea of floodgates, just the
size," said Yuzo Mifune, head of Fudai’s resident services and an
unofficial floodgate historian. "But Wamura somehow persuaded them that
this was the only way to protect lives."

Construction began in 1972 despite lingering concerns about its size as
well as bitterness among landowners forced to sell land to the government.

Even current Mayor Fukawatari, who at the time helped oversee
construction, had his doubts.

“I did wonder whether we needed something this big.”

The concrete structure was completed in 1984. It spanned 205 meters from
end to end. The total bill of \3.56 billion was split between the
prefectural government and the central government.

On March 11, after the 9.0 earthquake hit, workers remotely closed the
floodgate’s four main panels. Smaller panels on the sides jammed, and a
firefighter had to rush down to shut them by hand.

The tsunami battered the white beach in the cove, leaving behind debris
and fallen trees. But behind the floodgate, the village is virtually
untouched.

Fudai Elementary School sits no more than a few minutes’ walk inland. It
looks the same as it did on March 10. A group of boys recently ran laps
around a baseball field that was clear of the junk piled up in other
coastal neighborhoods.

Their coach, Sachio Kamimukai, 36, was born and raised in Fudai. He said
he never thought much about the floodgate until the tsunami.

“It was just always something that was there,” he said. "But I’m very
thankful now."

Fudai’s biggest casualty was its exposed port, where the tsunami
destroyed boats, equipment and warehouses.

One resident remains missing. He made the unlucky decision to check on
his boat after the earthquake.

Wamura left office three years after the floodgate was completed. He
died in 1997 at age 88. Since the tsunami, residents have been visiting
his grave to pay respects.

At his retirement, Wamura stood before village employees to bid
farewell: "Even if you encounter opposition, have conviction and finish
what you start. In the end, people will understand."

AP, May 18, 2011

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