Decompressing after Tohoku

I spent last week in the Iwate prefecture in the Tohoku region of Japan. I was doing relief work in Rikuzen-Takata with the Japan Association for Refugees (JAR). A group of about 30 people from all different backgrounds came together for what was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I am still working to decompress and process everything that I have done and seen in the past five days, but I have tried to share my experience below. It's a long post and definitely jumps around, but I think it gets the main points across.

I hadn't done much background research before starting my trip, but upon getting back to Tokyo I have been reading more about the city of Rikuzen-Takata. It is a coastal town in the Iwate prefecture of Japan, and was hit hard by the tsunami. A city of 24,000 residents, 18,000 were reported dead or missing in the few days following the tsunami, according to AlJazeera. An estimated 5,000 of 8,000 total homes were submerged. The low-lying areas of the town were completely wiped out -- in the volunteer center there was an aerial picture that shows that devastation, which is below. You can see most of the main roads have been cleared, but there is still tons (literally) of debris that needs to be removed.

An aerial photo of Rikuzen-Takata, taken April 10th 2011

Not really knowing what to expect, I left Tokyo at 10pm on Monday night and arrived to the campground in Hanamaki around 6:30am Tuesday morning. We were traveling by charter bus and I had my own row of two seats, so I slept pretty much the whole way. Upon arriving to the campground, we had a few minutes to drop of our stuff and change if we needed to, then we got on another bus that would take us to the worksite in Rikuzen-Takata. From the campsite to the worksite was about a two-hour bus ride each way. Each morning we stopped at the convenient store to get food for breakfast and lunch, and we then went to the volunteer center to pick up our tools before continuing to whatever we were working on that day.

On Tuesday, after stopping at the volunteer center, we continued driving towards the worksite. I was looking out of the window on my side of the bus when I heard someone mention something about “now we are in the disaster-hit area.” I looked out the other side of the bus and caught my breath – the tsunami waters had made it that far inland (official reports say the water made it almost 10km inland in some areas of Rikuzen-Takata), and everything was leveled. The riverbed and valley on the other side of the bus were full of debris and trash. I remember seeing a bunch of wood and clothing hanging from trees, but it was a lot to take in, and I mostly just remember wondering how there could be so much destruction. While many onboard the bus had been in Tokyo or Japan during the actual earthquake, it was the first trip to the tsunami-affected area for most of us, so the mood on the bus immediately changed as we started to realize what we are about to see.

Everything is leveled.

In all, we were at the worksite from about 10am to 3pm each day. JAR was really good about ensuring we maintain our mental and physical health, so we got breaks every hour and about 45 minutes for lunch. We did about four hours of good work each day. On Tuesday, our task was to remove trash and debris from rice paddies. Some of the fields are so covered in debris that its hard to believe they were ever clean – they look like fields that have been untouched for years, when really the debris was swept onto them in a matter of minutes by the rushing water. Removing trash from the muddy fields was tedious but mostly simple work – the men handled the heavy stuff such as removing a vending machine from one field and a huge log from another, and I walked around picking up smaller trash and pieces of wood. We sorted everything we picked up into burnable wood, plastic items, and other trash. We made good progress and the fields looked (almost) recognizable when we were done.

A cleared rice paddy with piles of trash on the side

The hardest part about cleaning the fields, and really seeing the debris in person in general, was finding all of the personal items that you can relate to in some way. I sort of knew what to expect from videos on YouTube and pictures in the media, but seeing it in person was of course a different story. Most of the images I had seen previously focused on the wide-scale devastation as a whole, but picking up trash we found items such as stuffed animals, playing cards, nail polish, perfume, a year-old newspaper that someone had chosen to save, shirts, tatami mats, old school photos, handwritten notes… and that was just the beginning.

A mini-memorial on one of the fields

Friday we had the same task of clearing rice paddies in a different area. Wednesday and Thursday the group worked to clear sidewalks so that the children (and everyone) could walk safely down the main road, especially to get to school. There is about a two-foot thick layer of mud/dirt on everything that was underwater, so we had quite a bit of digging to do before we even found the sidewalk. Then, once we found the concrete we had to shovel off all the dirt and clear out the debris that was buried (blankets, books, a kitchen sink, etc). It was very physically demanding but also very rewarding as we made great progress and the sidewalk looked really good when we were done. It started to rain pretty heavily on Wednesday afternoon, so we took a break and found the nearest shelter, which was a house that had been submerged. Being in the house was one of the hardest parts – the fridge door was hanging open so you could see all the food that was left in there, and personal items were strewn everywhere. Looking out the back wall of the house, it was hard to imagine all of the debris ever getting all cleared away. There was also a wheelchair by the front wall that had flowers placed outside it on the ground. That part was really hard.

In the back of the house

Our hard work on the sidewalk paid off!

Thursday, while most people were working on the sidewalks, I was one of six volunteers to go to the asaichi, which is an outdoor market that was set up either just for the holiday week or was a more permanent fixture (not sure which). A soba (noodle) shop that had been swept away by the water had set up a makeshift shack and was selling their delicious food, and various other vendors were selling everything from books to socks to vegetables. I worked selling books in the morning and then for most of the day was outside selling various clothing items. It was good Japanese practice (I even bout Goodnight Moon in Japanese!) and  the market was very inspiring to see. Thursday was Children’s Day, so all of the koinobori (“koi streamers” – very colorful flags shaped like the koi fish) were hanging up and the atmosphere was very light-hearted. All of the children were given a bag of treats, and then around lunchtime they raised the koinobori that had been decorated by the local children. From the hill where the market was, you could look down the road and see the nothingness, but seeing the children so happy was incredible to take part in. The market itself was an incredible experience. I got to observe and interact with many of the local residents, and it was really inspiring to see them coming together to be happy and move forward even in the face of such tragedy. Several people asked me where I was from, and then thanked me (sometimes in English and sometimes in Japanese) for coming there. It really made everything feel worth it.

Koinobori

The children raising the koinoburi that they decorated

Working outside!

My trip was an incredible experience as a whole (I keep using that word but I don’t really know what else to say). I worked with a great group of people and got to see the Japanese countryside, in addition to another round of the sakura blooming (the blooms are gone here in Tokyo, but since we were further north the trees had bloomed later). The campground was clean and our only option for a shower was a nearby onsen (traditional Japanese-style bathhouse), so I got to end every day in an outdoor hot tub. I have been talking since the beginning of my blog about how I hoped to get the opportunity to do relief work, and I think I'm still kind of in shock that it worked out. I saw things that I will never forget and it is incredible that a natural disaster can produce so much damage. Many in the media have compared the destruction to the ruins left after the atomic bombs, and a few people echoed that sentiment on the first day we were clearing rubble. However, while I had expected it to be a very emotionally challenging trip, the mood wasn't as somber as I had anticipated -- I think we had all been processing the disaster emotionally since it happened in March, and while at first the destruction was hard to witness, we went into it with the mindset of "okay, this is here, it happened, now what are the steps we need to take to start the clean-up." We really came together as a group and everyone gave their best effort. We ended the trip on a positive note -- the shoreline of Rikuzen-Takata had around 70,000 trees before the tsunami hit, but the raging waters tore them all down -- except for one. One lone pine tree remains standing near the shoreline, and it has become a symbol of hope for the whole recovery effort. We were able to drive by the tree on our last day and someone on the trip got a great photo, which is below. 

The lone tree standing amidst the ruins

This post really lacks organization but it was really hard to put into words everything I saw and felt in just five days. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, and check out the JAR website if you are in Japan and are interested in volunteering. Tohoku has an uphill battle ahead of them but the things I did and people I met leave no doubt in my mind that "the sun will rise again" in Japan. Please continue to follow the relief efforts online and donate what you can, whether it be time, money, or thoughts and prayers. Ganbatte!