Long before he became a global baseball icon, Shohei Ohtani lived through one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Japanese history. He was a 16-year-old high school freshman in Iwate Prefecture when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, a disaster that left more than 22,000 people missing or killed.
The magnitude 9.0 quake triggered a tsunami that destroyed coastal towns in the Tohoku region ¡ª including Kamaishi, Ofunato, and Rikuzentakata, all in Iwate ¡ª and affected communities further inland.
Fifteen years later, at 31, Ohtani¡¯s life has grown far beyond his humble beginnings.
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