Iwaki, Fukushima, Japan Graduation day arrived sunny and beautiful at Toyoma Junior High, and the 47 members of the senior class were in a cheerful mood. Just being at Toyoma Junior High was a day at the beach: the school overlooked Usuiso, one of Japan’s most popular coastlines, and the dizzying mood was captured in a scribble: “Thank you for the past three years! ! ”
In the gym, while teachers, families and classmates watched, the students in their navy uniforms sang the school song for the last time, accompanied as always by Toyoma’s beautiful grand piano.
In place of the cheaper uprights commonly purchased by schools and parents, Toyoma was blessed with a high-quality Yamaha “C5” grand piano donated by a local fishing magnate whose granddaughter was an alumna.
For more than a decade, the piano provided the soundtrack for Toyoma Jr High, serenading new students in April, accompanying school choirs and broadcasting the graduates every March.
After a morning of speeches and diplomas, the 2011 class took to the world. They never thought it would be turned upside down.
Disaster is happening
According to a local nonprofit, it took two months for a unit of the Ground Self-Defense Force to excavate the gym, whose beachfront setting exposed him to the full fury of the devastating tsunami that hit Japan’s east coast. year.
Credit to Hiroshi Endo
Fortunately, the school had drained a few hours before the 28-foot waves hit, leaving the gym’s clock frozen at 3:28; but more than 100 other residents of the Usuiso district would lose their lives.
As the rescuers waded through knee-high debris, their commander suddenly saw the wing in a corner of the stage, sadly falling on its side. The decision on the instrument may have sentimental value to local residents, field officer Isamu Yamaguchi ordered his men to carefully carry the sad wreckage to the center of the gym, where they used their bottled drinking water to gently wipe away the mud.
Credit to Hiroshi Endo
Later, at an emotional gathering hosted by the PTA, hundreds of Usuiso neighborhood residents gathered around the now-muted piano to sing the school song a cappella. The gym would be razed to the ground shortly afterwards.
But before that happened, Hiroshi Endo showed up.
“I don’t have time to be gone”
Had he got his way, Endo wouldn’t have been anywhere near Fukushima at the time.
His home in Iwaki and his piano shop had escaped the earthquake and tsunami unharmed, but then the radiation level rose after the accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant plant 30 miles to the north.
Terrified, he and his family fled 150 miles south to Chiba prefecture. But then his phone started to ring.
“Many customers contacted me and said their pianos had fallen over (during the earthquake). I thought, this is no time for me to be gone, he told CBS News in his store Despite serious doubts, Endo returned.
He heard about the destroyed piano in the Toyoma Junior High gym, and curiosity got the better of him.
“The outside was fairly clean, but the inside was full of mud.” Irreparable, he thought.
Credit to Hiroshi Endo
But an inscription on the right side of the piano caught his eye: “Donated by Hiromatsu Shike, September 1999.” This was not a standard school purchase, he realized, but tangible evidence of the spirit connecting this community.
Haunted by the discovery, he made a decision after 10 days: he would try to get the piano to sing again. After several months of bureaucracy with the school board, ownership of the £ 770 instrument was finally transferred to Endo.
You never wash a piano
“It smelled awful by then,” he recalls. “Rot had started.” The strings were rusty. Most of the keyboard was torn away, and the few remaining keys made a strangled sound.
Inside, the piano was so full of grit it looked like a sandbox. Endo’s two sons, also piano tuners and technicians, stated that the instrument was beyond salvation.
Having no idea where to even begin, Endo began disassembling the piano’s 10,000 components. Most hammers, dampers and other parts, he quickly determined, would have to be replaced for thousands of dollars – out of pocket.
Then he had to think about how to wash the instrument, a prospect that troubled him. “Normally, water is the enemy of a piano,” he said. “You should never was there a! But there was no choice.
The salt deposits had to be removed with a special cleaner. During the fall of 2011, the Endo family worked hard on the restoration.
Credit to Hiroshi Endo
“We had no confidence,” he said. “We had never tried to repair a piano destroyed by the tsunami.”
“A ray of hope”
But as news of their painstaking recovery spread, the weight of expectation grew. After all, it was still 2011 and the country remained deeply traumatized. A Tokyo television network, TBS, told Endo they wanted what was now called the “Miracle Piano” to star on their Christmas Eve show, so the team raced to finish.
“People needed a ray of hope,” said the gentle piano technician.
Endo can’t say if it sounds the same as before, but musicians have praised the piano’s soft, mellow quality and “warm” keyboard. Over the past decade, the Toyoma piano has traveled to dozens of cities, played by pop stars and school children, and heard as far as Taiwan and Singapore.
Credit to Hiroshi Endo
In one important aspect, the instrument remains unrepaired: The tsunami-induced scratches and cuts that mar the piano’s otherwise glossy onyx finish were intentionally left untouched – scars that move viewers to tears.
“A lot of people have touched the piano and said to me, ‘Endo-san, you worked hard on the restoration, but this piano – it’s really has been through a lot and to endure. ”
As he looks around his shop full of pianos, proof that his 40-year career makes them complete again, the 62-year-old restorer seems to have a soft spot for sick instruments.
But in this case, the piano was almost irrelevant. Endo was really trying to heal broken hearts.
“The students lost everything. Their school was gone, their relatives were dead or injured. The children were much more emotionally affected by the disaster than adults,” he told CSB News. “We wanted to show them, ‘Look! We’ve solved it!’ Despite all the tragedy, there was one little thing that brought us back to normal. ”