The earthquake off Tohoku and the subsequent tsunami have been devastating. It's impossible to put into words the effect of the live TV images of destruction, which seemed almost to be scenes from a disaster movie. To see farms and villages swept away by walls of black, debris-choked water was heart-breaking enough. The shock was amplified when the cameras of the choppers zoomed in to reveal that the flotsam was not a collection of small uprooted objects, but whole cars, buses and ships, swept along like a child's toy at the beach. Burning refineries, engorged and lethal rivers bursting with bobbing cars and helpless fishing boats, crushed houses. Somewhere in all this chaos are people. Somewhere. The thought of their condition, the realization that crossed their minds at the enormity of what was suddenly happening to them, is incomprehensible.
Japan, as you know, was my second home and some of my happiest memories were made there. Some of the kindest, sweetest people I will ever meet live there. This is a place that lives in my heart and to which my thoughts routinely return. So it is with deep sadness that I write these words.
I pray for those who mourn, who are afraid, who simply don't know what's next. For those who are injured, confused, trapped, desolate.
God bless Japan.
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