Photo/Illutration Carnations almost ready for shipping (Hiroki Endo)

NATORI, Miyagi Prefecture--The tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011 destroyed Fusako Miura's carnation fields here, but the years she spent restoring them helped her recover from the trauma of the disaster.

“These 10 years have passed by in a flash," said Miura, 69. "When I was feeling almost broken, the flowers and my grandchildren got me through it."

In the middle of March this year, she could be found inside one of her greenhouses, thinning shoots with her eldest son and his wife.

With Mother’s Day coming up in May, it's the busiest time of year for the carnation farming family.

“They’re growing fast, but I can’t let the flowers get the better of me,” Miura said with a smile.

It took a decade of restoration work by Miura before carnations bloomed consistently, showing their vivid colors again. The whole area where the family was raising them was flooded by the March 11, 2011, tsunami.

Due to the damage from the salt water, carnations couldn’t put down roots deeply and lost their colors.

Miura was working in a greenhouse when the tsunami struck. She rushed to a nursery school two kilometers away to pick up her grandchild, only to find toddlers there had already been evacuated to nearby Yuriage Elementary School.

When Miura arrived there, the raging tsunami appeared right before her eyes.

She spent the night on the third floor of the school, whose first floor was inundated, holding freezing children in her arms. The next day, she waded back to her home through knee-high seawater.

Inside her greenhouses, she found cars and the pillars of what had been houses. She and her husband, Kenji, had built 10 greenhouses in the 40 years up until then. Two were now gone, and the steel frames of the remaining ones were broken.

Her family's carnation crop was flattened, inundated and cover with debris, leaving them feeling hopeless and at a total loss at how they were going to make a living.

But one week later, they saw flower buds beginning to bloom even though they thought the carnations had been dying.

Many people who lost their homes and families came to buy the carnations, saying that they wanted to decorate the evacuation centers with them.

Inspired, the couple renewed their determination to continue their work and started working to regenerate the soil that had been flooded with seawater.

But despite their many attempts to reduce the salt concentration, including replacing the soil and spraying chemicals, the carnations only developed shallow roots and wilted before harvesting.

The year after the disaster, Kenji, who had always been in good health, passed away. To honor his last wishes, Miura continued to improve the soil with her son and his wife.

Their hard effort did not pay off for five years, during which the flowers were pale white.

Miura never gave up on them, she said, since to her, the carnations were like children she was raising.

The year after the disaster also saw the birth of Miura's granddaughter Futaba followed by her grandson Ryoma two years later.

Seeing them grow up encouraged Miura to keep working to restore her farmland and she kept improving the soil in small steps while she shared information with neighboring farmers.

Now the family's harvest has almost returned to predisaster levels, and Miura ships carnations in 12 colors, including red and pink.

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