Shoppers at Mitsuwa in Arlington Hts. worry about families back home

A nightmare woke Emiko Ford early Friday. Awake, she turned on the TV and learned to her horror an earthquake and tsunami had just hit her homeland.

Ford, of Milwaukee, and others with ties to Japan were at Mitsuwa on Friday, a Japanese store in Arlington Heights that draws Japanese from hundreds of miles around.

All said they have making frantic calls to friends and family in Japan.

It took Ford an hour to get a call through to her parents in Tokyo, whose high-tech home has shutters that close over the windows in earthquakes to protect the glass from flying debris.

The home shook. Blocks from a wall separating her parents from their neighbors fell into the garden. Tiles tumbled off a nearby roof.

The trains in Tokyo were not running, electricity was out in some places, and Ford and her parents have not been able to reach her brother, who was at work when the earthquake struck.

Ford met her American husband when he was working in Japan, and has lived in this country four years.

Miho Izawa is worried about her planned return to Japan in a few weeks because she fears for the safety of her 18-month-old son, Haruto. She lives in Madison, Wis., where her husband has been doing chemical research for two years.

Her family in Tokyo is OK, but her father could not get home and in-laws had to stay in hotels or their offices because the trains were not running.

Izawa's sister normally would use the train to get to and from her job, but this day she had taken her bicycle to work.

“Luckily she was on the bicycle and could go home to her (2-year-old) daughter,” Izawa said

Izawa said she is afraid to call her friend, a doctor in the area around Sendai, where the tsunami hit with greatest force.

Yoko Asanomi is visiting her daughter, Takako Kikumoto, in Buffalo Grove where her husband works for Mitsubishi. Asanomi is supposed to go home to Japan next week, said Kikumoto, but with the airport closed she might not be able to leave.

People in Japan are leaving their doors open so they don't get trapped if there's another quake, she said.

“This morning we called our cousins in Tokyo, and they escaped. A bowl is broken and a chest is moving,” said Kikumoto. “It's very scary, terrible. The cars are not moving.”