Just when the freezing cold and loneliness of living alone started to get the best of me, I had the opportunity to travel to the most affected areas of the earthquake and Tsunami in Northeast Japan.
Before I start to barf out my thoughts and emotions from this trip, I should warn you. This post is about to be sappy, so if you are as judgmental as i can be sometimes, please try to save it for another day. I’m clearly not the best at putting thoughts into words but I did learn a lot from this trip and I do have things that I want to share… so hopefully, reading this wont be a waste of your time.
Being on the other side of the world when disaster happened, and being from an unaffected area of Japan, the tsunami and earthquake weren’t two things that I felt very close to. Sure, I was shocked by all the images and videos that I saw on tv and the internet, but I honestly didn’t feel a strong urge to help out. I’m not really sure what pushed me to take my first step, but I’m glad I did and I can truly say that this experience was life changing.
Minami-sanriku, Miyagi 12.23.11
No exaggeration, when I first stepped out of the bus, I felt as though I was walking into some sort of a very well done replication of the remains of mass destruction. Most of the area was completely wiped out left only with foundations of buildings surrounded mounds of dirt and rubble. The buildings that were left either had it’s walls completely broken down left with only it’s iron skeleton, or had blown out windows and shaken up interior. In the taller buildings, you could see exactly to which height, the water reached. For example, I saw in a hospital that the windows were destroyed up to the 4th floor while the 5th was left relatively untouched.
What shocked me the most here was probably how behind restoration is in this area. We spent the day organizing rubble. Picking up the broken plates, medicine jars, paper document from remains of what used to be someones home felt like the tsunami had happened yesterday.
When you picking up what used to be the center of someone’s life, and organize it into piles of trash, you can’t help but get at least a little emotional. Ironically, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and not satisfaction of helping out that you would usually expect from volunteer work.
Picking up rubble in minami sanriku felt as though we were picking up where the tsunami left off, and very slowly washing washing away life in the area.
Rikuzentakata, Iwate 12.24.11
Our day in Rikuzentakata was exactly the opposite of what we experienced the previous day in Minamisanriku.
In this small city used to be a forest of 70,000 pine trees, after the devastation of 3.11, only one tree survived. Although, the tree is said to be impossible to conserve due to the sea water that has already begun to rot it’s roots, a civic group in the area has begun an effort to replant pine trees in the area.
On Christmas Eve, we worked with the members of the civic group “takata matsubara wo mamori kai” to plow a field to plant pine trees which will later hopefully be part of a new pine forest.
The scenery here was a lot like what we saw in Rikuzentakata the previous day. However, talking to the people who had experienced the massive tsunami, they all seem to be doing what they can to make best of the situation that was thrown at them. While I was still plagued with the feeling of hopelessness from the previous day, the people we met in Rikuzentakata gave us all feeling of warmth and hope for the future. During the day, the only toilets available to us were in the homes around the field. We had one designated household which we could visit to use the restroom. A little after lunch, we decided to visit the household. When we arrived, we saw group members huddled around a table with a middle aged woman. When we got closer we saw that the table was full of food, the woman greeted us and invited us to eat while we wait for the restroom. She told us about how she heard that we were coming to town and that she wanted to do something to welcome us, she talked about how many people in the area want to do something to welcome people who come to help out but don’t really know when and where they will be. I later found out that she had lost one of her grandchildren in the tsunami. If I had experienced the same devastation, I feel like I would try to shut out everything that has to do with that horrendous day and keep my emotions bottled up, saying that its something that “can’t be understood until experienced”. The warmth I felt when they welcomed us has stayed with me since and is definitely something I aspire to.
We ended the day looking at the light up of the lone pine tree. Seeing the tree lit up so beautifully but at the same time knowing that this maybe it’s last chance to shine seemed to give “bitter-sweet” a new meaning.
Kesennuma, Miyagi 12.25.11
In Kesennuma, we had the most hilarious tour guide. No other man would have made us laugh so much in such a sad situation.
He literally started singing karoke on the bus. I’m both proud and embarrassed to say that he reminded me of my grandpa.
Between laughs, him and our other two tour guides told us about their experiences. They told us about how their meal for the first day was a potato chip, and on the next day was a third of a fish sausage. They told us stories of how they saw people crying for help while being washed away by the tsunami.
Talking to them, and eating lunch in the temporary portables the city had set for restaurants, made me feel a lot closer to the people in the area. I guess it made me feel a lot closer to disaster and made me realize that what happened here could happen anywhere and to anyone.
On the bus coming home, we all talked about our thoughts and experiences from the trip. There was so much to learn from what everyone had to say.
Since I went with a group that ranged from high school students to adults, we had a mixture of views from all walks of life. It made me realize how important it is to express our thoughts and emotions, and give voice to our goals.
As we ring in a new year, and welcome a fresh start we can’t forget the things that are still left unresolved. 3.11 is definitely one of them and there is still a lot that has to be done. However corny this may sound, I realized that I need to keep my eyes open to the issues that we face today whether it be war or natural disaster. Because as long as I live on earth and am a member of the human race, it is something that I am somehow connected to. Just like it’s morally wrong to slam the door on someone who is obviously going to same way as me, it’s immoral to sit back and do nothing when I know that there is something that can be done.
