Wajima High School Baseball Team Aims to Practice on Their Own Field Again After Noto Peninsula Earthquake Damage

On July 30, the 49 schools participating in the Koshien Tournament were announced. Eighteen days earlier, the Wajima High School baseball team was playing its first game against Kanazawa Ryutani High School.

With a large lead, 1-11, in the sixth inning, the pitcher was out of the game with the count 2-2. The team lost the game in six innings. The game lasted one hour and 43 minutes, and Wajima’s summer came to an end.

To be honest, around February, I thought it would be impossible for us to play in our last summer tournament,” said Nakagawa. From that point on, with the support of many people, and with the help of the coach, I was able to play baseball. I have nothing but gratitude. I am glad that I continued until the end.

Nakagawa was rescued by helicopter when the area around his parents’ home, a shrine, was hit by the disaster and became a mandatory evacuation zone. He was evacuated to Kanazawa for a long period of time and moved to temporary housing in Wajima City around June. He was unable to attend school satisfactorily, and at one point considered transferring to a high school in Kanazawa. However, he reversed his decision and returned to Wajima.

I guess it was because I loved Wajima and the Wako baseball team,” he said.

In early July, just as the summer season was about to begin, I visited Wajima. After exiting the Hokuriku Expressway at the Kanazawa-Higashi Interchange, I headed toward the cities of Suzu and Wajima in Ishikawa Prefecture, known as “Okunoto,” along the “Noto Satoyama Kaido,” a road for motor vehicles only.

Part of this road has a section called “Ototo no michi,” where the opening song of NHK’s TV series “Mare,” which is set in Wajima City, is played.

The road is an acoustic road where sound is played when tires pass through grooves placed on the road. The “Ototo-no-michi” is a little over one kilometer long, but it suffered a major collapse after the Noto Peninsula earthquake that occurred on New Year’s Day this year. Even now, as the road is being restored, there are still sections where traffic alternates from one side to the other, and the melodies are halting. The fragmented melodies echoing in the train made us keenly aware of the fact that reconstruction is progressing, but is still halfway there.

January 1, 2012, 16:10. Ryoichi Tomimizu, manager of the Wajima baseball team, was in the city of Kahoku in the same prefecture.

He felt a violent tremor and hurried to gather information. He initially planned to return to his home in Wajima City that day, but after witnessing the devastation of the “Noriyama Kaido” mentioned above on TV, he decided not to go home. He was evacuated to the home of his sister and her husband. At the time, however, he did not take the situation seriously.

I had experienced the Noto Peninsula earthquake 17 years ago, when I returned home after hearing about the terrible situation and found that I was fine, so I thought that this time would be no different.

However, my faint hopes were dashed tomorrow morning when I saw a TV broadcast that showed a different picture from the hometown I knew. The first thing Tomimizu did was to confirm the safety of the 28 members of the Wajima baseball team.

When I saw the footage on January 2, I knew this was a disaster,” he said. I immediately contacted the club members and asked, ‘Are you alive?　How are you doing? I was so worried. But for the life of me, I couldn’t get a hold of two of them.”

The village where Nakagawa and the other two club members lived was isolated due to severely collapsed buildings and roads. Cell phone reception was also cut off, but a major cell phone carrier sent an emergency marine signal by boat, and the signal finally arrived. By the time contact was made with all the members, January 6 had arrived.

It was a relief to know that everyone was safe, including the former third-year students who were still in school. Tomimizu himself had not been able to return to his home since immediately after the disaster, and he was busy trying to ensure his safety and thinking about “how to live from now on. What brought baseball back into Tomimizu’s thoughts was none other than his own student. It was when Tomimizu went to an evacuation center in Wajima City to deliver supplies to his relatives.

He asked Tomimizu, “Mr. Teacher, when are you going to start playing baseball?　When are you going to start playing baseball?

He was startled. Tomimizu recalled his memory.

Sensei, are you all right? Are you all right? or “How are you? is the usual way to ask. A club member named Sakaguchi (Kosei), who had originally told the players that practice would resume on January 4 and was huddled in the parking lot of a hospital that had become an evacuation center, just like his relatives, had been thinking of nothing but playing baseball from January 4. All he could think about was playing baseball from January 4. He said, “I can’t even play catch because of the parking lot! He said, “I can’t even play catch because of the parking lot! I was already soooo moved by that. ……”

However, there were countless barriers to playing baseball. First was location.

The Wajima baseball team mainly plays on the baseball field of the former Wajima Minoru, which was integrated in ’10. It is a short distance from the school building in Wajima, and the players used to ride bicycles to get there, but the road leading to the field collapsed due to the earthquake. The road was blocked by debris, making the ground inaccessible.

Deep cracks were found behind the lights and in the outfield of the stadium, and some of the ground has collapsed as if by a landslide. The field was used not only by local elementary and junior high school students, but also by the Wajima Baseball Club for night practice, supporting local baseball.

The children of Wajima have no place to play baseball anymore, and that is a big problem for us.

The baseball team resumed its activities on February 2. Tomimizu was able to move into temporary housing in Kanazawa, and the team practiced on weekends at the temporary housing and at an indoor practice field at a ballpark in Kanazawa. This was also the time when the resumption of school was delayed due to damage to the school building in Wajima.

Even after school classes resumed, practice sessions were extremely difficult. The baseball team tried to practice on the school grounds if they could not use the baseball field, but it became a base for vehicles of the Self-Defense Forces. The indoor practice field was also used as an evacuation shelter, so weight training was not possible.

After the opening of practice games in March, Tomimizu drove from Kanazawa at 4:00 a.m. to meet the club members in Wajima City, and after the game, he drove the long distance again to drop them off. He worked hard to create an “environment where baseball could be played,” something that had been taken for granted until now.

I thought, “This is what I became a leader for,” he said. I thought, “This is what I became an instructor for: to create an environment where baseball can be played for children who love baseball and who want to play baseball. That is my role. That is my role, and I am here as an instructor to keep baseball alive.

He also realized the support of those around him.

In addition to the location, money was a bottleneck in the resumption of activities. Some of the club members lost all of their baseball equipment when their homes collapsed in the earthquake. Some members lost all of their baseball equipment because their homes were destroyed in the quake, and they needed to buy more equipment to improve their practice environment, as well as funds to rent a place to practice. The situation was also saved by the relationships that had been formed through baseball.

LIGA Agresiva, a private high school baseball league that Tomimizu attended an information session in Toyama Prefecture last December and was preparing to launch in Ishikawa this year, received donations of approximately 1.07 million yen from participating schools nationwide, including Keio University, which won the Koshien Tournament last summer, and Oyama Sanyo, which finished in the top eight in the same tournament. The schools donated approximately 1.07 million yen to the Liga Aggresiva. Tomimizu said, “Mr. Tomohito Sakanaga, the organizer of the event, has been a great help.

Tomohito Sakanaga, the organizer of the event, attracted me to his way of thinking, and I participated in a study session held in Toyama at the end of the year. Even though I had not yet fully participated, he was really generous in his support. Thanks to the donations, we are able to operate the team with the same club expenses as in previous years.”

A rival team located in the same city of Wajima was also warm. Japan Aviation Ishikawa, a team that competed in this spring’s Sembatsu Tournament, lent us their field after practice for our team. The rival team had lost 1-6 in the quarterfinals of the previous fall’s Ishikawa Tournament, but the team’s manager, Takashi Nakamura, and Tomimizu had long been friends and had discussed baseball with each other.

Every day that he is exposed to support is also a time for him to reflect on his past.

I really feel like such a lousy person, but I didn’t do anything at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake or the Kumamoto Earthquake. I was just another person’s problem, an outsider’s problem. And yet, when it came time for me to be in that position, so many people offered me warm words and support. It made me realize that we live by the support of others, and that we are truly “kept alive.

For Tomimizu, the current third-year students, regardless of whether or not they were affected by the earthquake, are a group to which he has a deep emotional attachment.

In September 2009, when they were in their third year of junior high school, it was announced that Tomoshige Yamashita, who had led Seiryo to 25 Koshien appearances in spring and summer and made it a prestigious team in Ishikawa, would become a baseball coaching advisor at his old school, Monzen High School. The fact that a public school in the same city of Wajima had invited a great coach instantly turned the attention of the city’s baseball boys to Kadozen. Nevertheless, four third-year players chose Wajima.

I kept thinking, “Because of these circumstances, I had to make the third-year students who chose Wajima think, ‘I’m glad I came.'”

In late March, at the suggestion of Sue Wataru, the leader of Sendai Ikuei, the team was invited to Sendai for three days, along with Iida from Suzu City, which had also been severely damaged, to practice and compete with the Sendai Ikuei team members.

The team members of Sendai Ikuei have been in contact with each other since then, and not only do they keep in touch via LINE, but all the third-year students came to support the team in the final of the Miyagi Tournament. I cannot count the number of things I lost because of the disaster, but I also gained things that I could only have gained there.

If there is anything I have left to regret, what is it? I asked Nakagawa in closing.

I would like to practice on our own field one more time,” he said. The first-year students haven’t had a chance to practice on the Rinzai High School field. I would like to get together with all the students one more time on our own field.

According to Tomimizu, there is a possibility that the ground will not be restored in time for Nakagawa and the other students to graduate. The final summer tournament for the Nakagawas had come to a close. However, I also believe that their high school baseball games will not truly be over until they stand on their own ground once again.

We do not know how much time it will take. Still, I hope that the day will come when they will be able to stand on their home field and say, “I am glad I came to Rinko High School.

(Honorifics omitted in the text)