KOBE, Jan. 17 KYODO
The Japanese western port city of Kobe and its neighboring cities which were devastated in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake commemorated Sunday the 15th anniversary of the disaster that claimed the lives of 6,434.
People gathered before dawn at a park located at the center of Kobe to light thousands of bamboo lanterns in the shape of ''1995'' and ''1.17'' and offered silent prayers at 5:46 a.m., the time the magnitude 7.3 quake hit the city.
Kiyomi Mabuchi, 53, whose husband and in-laws were killed after their house collapsed on top of them, came from Tokushima Prefecture to mourn them at Higashi-Yuenchi Park.
''People say it's been 15 years, but whether it's 15 or 20 years, our feelings do not change,'' she said.
Wearing a necklace her husband was wearing at the time of his death, Mabuchi said, ''There may be no recovery for my heart.''
Some kneeled before the lanterns to pray while others were seen standing and crying during the countdown to the moment at the park filled with people.
Junji Yamashita, an elementary school vice-principal who lost his parents due to the quake, came to the site, which he started visiting 9 years ago after deciding he has to face the experience before he can teach his young students about it.
The 48-year-old used to teach at a Japanese school in Tehran and collected donations at his school when a major earthquake hit Bam, Iran, in 2003. The school gave a total of some 250,000 yen to a local aid worker who later established a care home for young quake victims.
He said he had told his students a few days earlier that other countries helped Kobe recover, and the students responded, ''We have to take action'' over the earthquake that devastated Haiti earlier in the week.
In a city-hosted memorial ceremony that followed the prayers, gospel singer Yuri Mori, who lost her younger brother in the Great Hanshin quake, sang a song written to wish recovery for the city.
Mori earlier said she would sing the song, ''Shiawase Hakoberu yo ni'' (To Carry Happiness), so that she can bring happiness not to just her deceased brother Wataru, a 22-year-old university student, but to all the victims and survivors of the disaster.
Hiromi Shimoura, a 49-year-old resident of Kobe, who also lost her 85-year-old grandmother Kimino Sugimoto, gave a speech to represent the bereaved families in the city.
''Every time when this day arrives, I recall the event vividly as if it had just happened, and it makes me cry,'' she said, mentioning the rows of houses diminished to rubble and the death of her grandmother, whom she said she ''loved dearly.''
''The earthquake took away many precious lives and things from us. But it also taught us many things that are important to people...I want to continue passing them down to the children who do not know about the disaster and children yet to be born so that the event that day would not fade away,'' she said.
Kobe Mayor Tatsuo Yada offered condolences at the ceremony to families of those killed in the disaster and mentioned the continuous threats of earthquakes, referring to the powerful one that marred Haiti.
''Overseas, just few days ago, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti, and serious disasters have occurred in other regions as well, forcing us to realize that we are always fraught with the dangers of disasters.''
Various memorial events were held throughout the city and other parts of Hyogo Prefecture, allowing people to offer flowers, post their messages on the disaster in front of office buildings and sign condolence books.
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