YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--A letter penned by her mother but never posted is now a treasure for a 52-year-old resident of this town that the tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake swept through on March 11, 2011.

Yasuko Abe found it in a desk drawer while going through her mother Mitsuko's things in 2017. In spring that year, Mitsuko, who had been living in temporary housing, died at age 73.

The letter, written in June 2013, began, “To Grandpa in heaven. Two years and three months have passed since you went to a place far away. How is life over there?”

The letter was to Yasuko’s father, Kenro, who went missing after the tsunami hit Yamada but was never found. He was 70 at the time.

Mitsuko addressed him as "Grandpa" following the Japanese custom to often refer to relatives by their relationship to the newest addition to the family.

Kenro ran a cleaning business, but his real passion was coaching youth baseball. Normally mild-mannered, Kenro became excited whenever it came to baseball.

“The kids are playing very seriously," he once yelled at an umpire during a game. "Why don’t you do your job?!”

So his grandchildren could practice batting while he tossed balls to them, he installed a net in a second-floor room at home.

After the March 11, 2011, disasters, Yasuko moved into temporary housing near a baseball field because, “I wanted my father to be able to hear the sounds of baseball.”

There were times when Kenro appeared before Yasuko as an apparition.

She could also hear the sound of her father opening the screen door at home and removing groceries bought at the supermarket.

When she turned to the sounds, she saw him standing there. He had on a jacket that he always wore to baseball practice and smiled but never said anything.

On those occasions, Mitsuko, who lived in a different temporary housing unit, would invariably phone her daughter.

“Grandpa showed up here," Mitsuko would tell her. "But did he go to your place?”

Yasuko never was surprised at the “reunions,” but they left her longing for the past.

“I felt like he was worried about whether I was eating properly,” Yasuko recalled.

After the tsunami struck Yamada, fires also broke out, turning the town into a barren wasteland. But a new community has been built centered on the train station, and the coastal embankment has been elevated.

Yasuko and her family decided to rebuild their home on its former site where the foundation had been raised and to set aside a room for Mitsuko.

But one morning a social welfare organization employee called Yasuko, inquiring if her mother was all right.

“Has something happened? Because a number of days’ worth of newspapers have piled up,” the employee asked.

Yasuko went to her mother's and found her collapsed against the wall in the bathroom. Three days had passed since she died. The autopsy said the cause of death was a stroke.

Shortly before the estimated time of Mitsuko’s death, Yasuko missed a call from her mother on her cellphone. Noticing it later, she was unable to stop crying, sitting on a bench outside the temporary housing unit.

The third page of Mitsuko's letter to her husband goes, “Today is June 23, my birthday. I have become the same age as you. … How many more years can I go on living? Although I have to depend on my pension, I am enjoying life.”

Yasuko and her husband now live in their rebuilt home. Her eldest son and his wife who live nearby now have two children, so Yasuko is called “Grandma.”

The Buddhist altar in Yasuko's home displays photos of her father in his baseball uniform and her mother at the evacuation center. Her mother's letter is kept close by.

“I feel they are always looking over us,” Yasuko said. “I hope they are together somewhere.”

In past years on March 11, Yasuko did not go to the family grave because she could not accept that her father was gone. She would only attend the memorial service sponsored by the town government.

But this year, Yasuko has decided to go to the grave.

“It is not as though something has changed," she said. "It's only that 10 years have passed. I will tell them what we've done until now.”