TWO suitcases of belongings and a sense of dislocation were all the Jones family had when they arrived in Oxford after leaving tsunami-hit Japan.

Dominic Jones, 41, his wife Eri, 44, and their children Lawrence, seven, and Michelle, two, were in Sendai on Friday, March 11, when the city was hit first by a massive earthquake then a devastating tsunami wave, triggered by the quake.

They are now staying with Mr Jones’s sister Louise Niland in Headington, after leaving behind a city in ruins, members of Mrs Jones’s family and many friends.

Mr Jones, an English lecturer at Sendai University, said: “It feels very strange to be back. I’m a refugee in my own country.”

They have enrolled Lawrence at a school in Oxford and Mr Jones spent Monday walking around charity shops in Headington to try to find a pair of shoes.

Mr Jones was in his office when the 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck at 3pm local time.

He said: “It didn’t seem that serious at first. Then we heard about the tsunami warning.

“We heard there was a wall of water seven metres high travelling at 500mph towards the coast.”

Mr Jones set off immediately to find his family. He added: “I was worried, but I just went into survival mode.”

He found them heading home from the local school. They spent the night camped in the school with hundreds of other families.

Returning to their home, they found it had only suffered superficial damage, but there was no electricity and little water.

Mr Jones said: “I went up to the top of the building and it was surreal. You could see all the stars, which you can’t usually because of the light pollution. In the distance, the gas refinery was sending up huge flames into the sky.”

In the next few days there were long queues across the city to buy food and find fresh water, with ruined buildings on most streets.

It was a particularly difficult time for Mrs Jones, an English teacher. Her school, Matsushima High School, is in the middle of the tsunami-hit area on the coast. Many of her pupils are still unaccounted for.

At 3am on Friday morning, he learned that the British Embassy in Tokyo was advising Britons to leave Sendai and other places within 80 kilometres of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant, amid fears that there could be a radiation leak from the stricken plant, where cooling systems were knocked out by the tsunami.

Engineers were last night still battling to restore power supplies at the plant and to cool down uranium fuel rods in a storage pool.

The decision to leave was hard for the couple. Mrs Jones’ relatives are still in the area, but they decided in the end to leave for their children’s sake. Mr Jones said: “We decided we were going to go. And then we just broke down.”

They boarded a bus with other Britons and travelled 13 hours to Tokyo, before flying to Hong Kong and on to London. They reached Oxford on Sunday.

Mr Jones said: “It was a horrendously hard decision. Many people don’t have anywhere to go, anywhere to get their kids to safety and we were asked why we were going. My wife was in tears.”

The family will stay in Oxford until it is safe to return .

Mr Jones will address an assembly for pupils at St Joseph’s Primary School in Headington about their experiences on Monday.

He said: “My wife and kids were in pieces. But we’re not moaning about our situation. We’re the lucky ones.”