Over the years, Hiroshi Uchikura made a point of sending a New Year’s card to Yuka by way of staying in touch. But other than that, they hadn't spoken to each other in 25 years.

Then, out of the blue, she called him. He was dumbfounded.

The last time they met was in 1995 after Uchikura, now 51, rushed to the port city of Kobe in the depths of winter as a volunteer to assist evacuees following a magnitude-7.3 earthquake that devastated the city and nearby areas on Jan. 17.

The pair decided to meet at an outdoor barbecue venue that Uchikura’s father runs in Akiruno, a city on the outskirts of Tokyo. It was the summer of 2020, and Yuka brought her family.

“I am a mother of three children now,” she said. “My oldest daughter is around the same age as I was back then.”

Yuka started reminiscing about the weeks she and her family spent living in a gymnasium as evacuees. Uchikura, then a college senior in Tokyo, traveled to Kobe 11 days after the disaster to volunteer his help.

CHAOS AND TEARS

He was confronted by a chaotic scene when he arrived at the junior high school to which he was assigned. More than 1,000 people made homeless by the quake took up every available space.

The walls of the gym were filled with sheets of paper that victims had pasted to look for leads on missing relatives.

Despite the mass of evacuees, Uchikura managed to find a tiny space he could squeeze into near the entrance. It was chilly there, but he was able to catnap for 90 minutes or so before going back to work again.

When he burned pieces of wood debris in an 18-liter square can, evacuees began huddling around it for warmth. Among them was a feisty middle-aged woman who said she kept her 13-year-old daughter safe when the house started to collapse by placing herself over her body. The daughter was Yuka.

Uchikura barely recalls what he talked about with Yuka all those years ago. But he he does recall the sense of helplessness he felt while doing his best in the gym to be of assistance to the evacuees.

The sheer enormity of the disaster--6,400 people dead and thousands homeless--was hard to take in.

A load of blankets was delivered to the gym, but not enough for each evacuee.

A city resident still living in a damaged house stopped by for a food handout but had to be turned away as there was only enough emergency food for people evacuating there.

It was agonizing to decline, and Uchikura could not hold back his tears.

BITTERNESS SETS IN

On one occasion, a distraught evacuee told him, “You can go back to normalcy, leaving us behind here.” Uchikura, stung by the remark, struck back, “Why are you saying such a thing when I am doing all I can?”

Later, he felt awful about the exchange. He was convinced that being with victims and sharing their hardships was all he could do.

After a week or so of volunteer work, Uchikura returned to Tokyo and his warm and comfortable home. His friends joked about his readiness to extend a helping hand to those in need.

He was tormented by the sense of worthlessness felt in Kobe as he adjusted to back to an easy life in Tokyo. Uchikura found it hard to keep his emotions in check, so he tried to suppress his bitter memories of Kobe.

After graduating from college, he landed a job, got married and started a family.

His job kept him busy and he found he spent less time dwelling on his experiences in Kobe.

When friends volunteered to help out after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan or in Kumamoto Prefecture after a powerful quake, Uchikura simply handed them an envelope with cash for victims. He kept telling himself his busy work schedule did not allow him time off to the stricken areas.

After Uchikura and Yuka brought each other up to date on their lives during their reunion at the barbeque site, she told him something he had never expected. That she had come to see him to simply express her gratitude for what he did in Kobe.

“Back then, I was very young and terrified as evacuees sometimes got into arguments,” she said. “But you and other college volunteers worked hard to make the gym as lively as possible so that I did not feel lonely. I always wanted to meet you again in person to express my thanks.”

Her kind words affected him deeply. Suddenly, he felt enormously rewarded for what he had tried to achieve in Kobe, having felt so useless for so long.

“I kept asking myself what I could do at the time, and now it turns out I at least did do something meaningful to someone,” he said to himself.

Uchikura and Yuka sobbed silently for a while.