When my daughter Susie learned she would spend the 1992-93 school year in Japan as an exchange student from the Rotary Club in Klamath Falls, Oregon, we both puzzled over a map of Japan trying to find the city of Sendai.

Now, nearly 20 years later, I’ve watched images of a much different Sendai, a city leveled by March's devastating earthquake. Its epicenter was just 80 miles east of Sendai. Worse, much of the town was swept away by resulting tsunamis. Thousands are known dead and countless others remain missing.

For me, Sendai isn’t just another faraway place.

During the spring of 1993 I spent nearly a month in Japan, mostly traveling with Susie. We toured Kyoto and Tokyo, ordered fried octopus while watching a Japanese baseball game, had to forego a planned climb up Mount Fuji because of storms, rode the Bullet train and stayed in remote hostels. By the time of my visit she was speaking remarkably fluent Japanese. Those language skills and the friendships she shared with her host families gave us access to places and lifestyles not normally seen nor experienced by other foreigners. Thanks to her, we weren't completely strangers in a strange land.

Along with its friendliness, Sendai is known for kokeshi, dolls handmade from wood. They have a simple trunk, no arms or legs, an enlarged head with a few thin, painted lines that define the face and a body with simple floral designs. During her stay, Susie, then a high school junior, visited kokeshi-making factories and collected several. During my visit, I saw kokeshi made by artists in parks, including one known for its tall, stone Buddha, where Susie visited often. Three kokeshi dolls sit on a shelf at my home, reminders of my visit and of Susie.

The dolls and other items she brought home, took on extra meaning a few years later. Susie, who was stricken with lymphoma cancer in the seventh grade, had been regarded a “cure” and was given a medical go-ahead before going to Japan. But two years after returning her cancer returned even more aggressively. She died in December 1996, only days before her 21st birthday.

Re-reading Susie’s letters refreshes my memories of Sendai and of her, but there's another reason why I retrieved her letters. One includes the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the families she lived with—the Katos, the Matsuras, the Adachis, the teachers and staff at Tokiwagi Gakuen High School and unknown others. I've sent them letters and tried to make telephone contact but, so far, I haven't connected.

I’ve never forgotten the love and kindness they gave my daughter. Now it’s my turn.