Aftermath

September 21, 2011 | Japan, Japan Earthquake 2011, Laughing Knees, Tohoku | 23 Comments 

Six months have passed since the Great To­hoku Dis­as­ter. Dur­ing these bright, sunny, late sum­mer days, when the build­ings hold still and the nights pass un­per­turbed by mo­ments of ter­ror when even the small­est move­ment of the bed shoots me awake from rest­less sleep, it is some­times hard to re­mem­ber that just a few months ago the whole world was shak­ing off its hinges and seemed to be tot­ter­ing at the edge of ending.

I can’t quan­tify what the whole ex­pe­ri­ence did to me. All I know is that I haven’t been able to write in the blog all this time; all ven­tures within sight of the events would leave my thoughts blank. Words al­most seemed to lose their lift be­fore any­thing co­her­ent even be­gan to form. And not just writ­ten words, but any­thing ut­tered, too. When I wasn’t clack­ing along in rush hour trains, lurch­ing and sway­ing with every­one else, try­ing to think of noth­ing but work, it was time­less cata­to­nia, sit­ting by the bed­room win­dow, just watch­ing clouds scud by. The world seemed to be mov­ing else­where. For months noth­ing seemed to be hap­pen­ing at all around me, not even while be­ing tum­bled and kicked in the con­fu­sion of uni­ver­sity work.

And it’s not as if ev­i­dence of the quake dis­ap­peared when the shak­ing be­gan to let off. On the trains and sub­ways, in su­per­mar­kets and shop­ping cen­ters, in of­fice build­ings and sports cen­ters, lights and un­needed elec­tric de­vices re­mained switched off, and you stepped down into stair­wells and lob­bies and glided through a hushed gloom. Per­haps be­cause so many peo­ple have vol­un­teered to turn down or turn off their air con­di­tion­ers, the whole city felt dis­tinctly cooler than most of the sum­mers of the last twenty years. Daily the news poured out sta­tis­tics of the in­vis­i­ble threat from that gap­ing maw spew­ing nu­clear ichor across the land, just north of us, from the re­gion that was beloved for its green lush­ness and veg­eta­bles, now, just the name “Fukushima” con­jures up ghosts and os­tracism, hu­man ug­li­ness and un­speak­able sorrow.

Fur­ther north lurks the “Place That Can’t Be Men­tioned”, that vast, vast swath of wreck­age and era­sure that can­not be taken in by one mind, reach­ing far be­yond the abil­ity of the eye to reg­is­ter any­thing fa­mil­iar, and har­bor­ing such a teem­ing cho­rus of lost voices that you can­not en­counter the scenes with­out break­ing down.

Two weeks af­ter the big quake and tsunami, I de­cided to head up to To­hoku to see for my­self what this hor­ror was that had vis­ited us, and to of­fer what­ever I could to help, how­ever small my con­tri­bu­tion. It was bet­ter than sit­ting help­less in Tokyo, ag­o­niz­ing over the pho­tos and videos I kept see­ing on the Internet.

I had no plan upon first look­ing for a way up there. News was bro­ken, much of it hearsay, with ru­mors go­ing around of long lines of cars run­ning out of gaso­line long be­fore mak­ing it up to the zone of de­struc­tion. Tele­phone lines were out and any food avail­able up there was meant for the sur­vivors, many of whom were starv­ing in re­mote, in­ac­ces­si­ble towns. And so it was like head­ing north into the Heart of Dark­ness, my trep­i­da­tion very real, my in­ex­pe­ri­ence and ig­no­rance warn­ing me that I was be­ing a fool, that the dis­as­ter could eas­ily eat me alive, too.

I found a vol­un­teer or­ga­ni­za­tion down­town that re­ferred me to an­other lone vol­un­teer head­ing up north in two days. She had a con­nec­tion up there in Minami-​​Sanrikucho, the hard­est hit town in all of the tsunami zone. I went into a frenzy get­ting my­self pre­pared, gath­er­ing all my camp­ing gear, buy­ing all the food for a week, scour­ing the city for wa­ter jugs, al­most all of which had been bought up by the pan­ick­ing peo­ple in Tokyo, where food was run­ning out in the su­per­mar­kets and cars had to wait for hours to buy gaso­line. I man­aged to get it all to­gether be­fore my travel part­ner was due to ar­rive to pick me up. I sat on the couch in the liv­ing room, my heart pound­ing, not at all sure of what I was get­ting my­self into.

The drive up north was sur­pris­ingly nor­mal, with al­most no stops, smooth sail­ing along an un­bro­ken high­way that seemed not to have seen one of the biggest earth­quakes in his­tory. My travel com­pan­ion and I ban­tered about our back­grounds, our in­ter­ests, even lis­ten­ing to her col­lec­tion of iTunes songs and singing along. It was sur­real. We kept glanc­ing out of the car win­dows, seek­ing signs of de­struc­tion and mis­ery, but see­ing noth­ing but the usual Japan­ese rural land­scape. No dam­age seemed to have been done.

The ride took much longer than we had an­tic­i­pated, so it was al­ready dark by the time we reached the out­skirts of Minami-​​Sanrikucho. All the street lights were out, so we drove in dark­ness, along de­serted roads that passed through town af­ter town with not a soul vis­i­ble in any of the houses or walk­ing the streets. As if a har­bin­ger for what we were about to en­counter, a gi­gan­tic dog-​​like crea­ture ap­peared sud­denly in the head­lights on the verge of the road and we swept past with­out be­ing able to iden­tify what it was. The road ran out of pave­ment and we started bump­ing along a dirt track, when sud­denly, like an ex­hibit in a ghost house, an up­turned house loomed out of the dark­ness, right in the mid­dle of the road. My com­pan­ion shrieked and slammed on the breaks. We sat there, hearts pound­ing in our mouths, star­ing as the head­lights shone into an empty win­dow. When we peered around the car into the dark­ness, we be­came aware of the moun­tains of wreck­age, wooden beams piled like match­sticks, houses and cars mashed to­gether in im­pos­si­ble heaps, huge steel I-​​beams wrapped like spaghetti around build­ing cor­ners. It was piled so high we couldn’t see over it, all around us. The air was thick with dust, and when I rolled down the win­dow it stank of brine and dead fish, mud and rot­ting veg­e­ta­tion. And we re­al­ized that it wasn’t an earth­quake that we had come to, but the hor­ror of the tsunami.

We drove gin­gerly through the de­tri­tus, pick­ing the way care­fully over the de­bris, un­til we found the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter, where my companion’s con­tact waited.

The rest of the week in the town was un­like any­thing I’d ever ex­pe­ri­enced and I was to­tally un­pre­pared for it. I had imag­ined camp­ing amidst the wreck­age, and work­ing with vol­un­teers to help clear this up, but in re­al­ity it was much too dan­ger­ous to spend much time in the wreck­age, due to the dan­ger of in­fec­tion and pro­lif­er­at­ing bac­te­ria, and to the for­est of ra­zor sharp edges every­where, even un­der­foot. In­stead, we stayed at the town’s sports center/​ evac­u­a­tion cen­ter, pro­tected and or­ga­nized by the lo­cal gov­ern­ment and the Self De­fense Forces. The whole pop­u­la­tion of the sur­round­ing town was housed in the gym, thou­sands of peo­ple crammed to­gether on every square inch of the floors. On the floor of the gym it­self was a scene straight out of the end­ing of Raiders of the Lost Ark… a gi­gan­tic ware­house of stacks and aisles of boxes of food­stuffs, ba­sic sur­vival goods, clothes, and blan­kets. Every­where out­side gi­ant trucks and heavy ma­chin­ery rum­bled in the park­ing spaces, with lines of sol­diers, teams of doc­tors and res­cue work­ers, and an army of vol­un­teer work­ers do­ing all the me­nial work like hand­ing out food, clean­ing toi­lets, car­ry­ing boxes, and an­swer­ing the ques­tions of the scared evacuees.

Dur­ing the week I met quite a few of them, lis­tened to their sto­ries, ate with them, helped them with ba­sic chores. Nearly all of them re­vealed hav­ing lost some­one, and the sto­ries were har­row­ing and painful to lis­ten to. And yet, every­one at­tempted to laugh and bear all this with dig­nity and grace. Walk­ing around the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter for the first part of the week a sense of mu­tual re­spect and calm­ness per­vaded every­thing. That is un­til the sec­ond to the last day, when, af­ter nearly three weeks be­ing crammed to­gether with hun­dreds of other fam­i­lies, eat­ing the same in­stant food, bore­dom set­tling in, and anx­i­ety over hav­ing lost their homes and liveli­hoods fi­nally kick­ing in, sev­eral brawls erupted in the park­ing lots. Some of the lo­cals be­gan to grow sus­pi­cious of peo­ple like me who had come from Tokyo, where none of this de­struc­tion ex­isted at this level. One man, catch­ing sight of the only for­eigner be­sides the Is­raeli res­cue unit to have come to the town (nearby Ishi­no­maki was be­ing called the “Hara­juku of the Dis­as­ter Zone” be­cause of all the young and non-​​Japanese vol­un­teers), shouted at me in the worst tough-​​guy gut­tural Japan­ese, that I should stop butting into pri­vate people’s lives and that they didn’t need out­side help. I later man­aged to get him to sit down and tell me about his ex­pe­ri­ence: he had lost every­one, in­clud­ing his 7 year old daugh­ter, his 10 year old son, his wife, his fa­ther, and brother. Only his ag­ing and sick mother had sur­vived, but, af­ter dri­ving out of the small coastal town up the coast, he had been wait­ing for six days to get his mother into a med­ical fa­cil­ity and he was wor­ried she wouldn’t make it. He broke down sob­bing in the midst of this story, and he was so ashamed that he got into his car, and locked the door. To see this proud and de­ter­mined man get re­duced to sob­bing be­cause he felt so help­less made me ask my­self if com­ing here was not just be­ing self­ish and nov­elty seek­ing. What dif­fer­ence could I make here? I spoke to quite a few vic­tims, and each time the sto­ries were sim­i­lar. One old man re­lated how he had been stand­ing on a hill over­look­ing his house when the tsunami hit, and he could only stand there help­lessly as he watched his wife and 20 year old son get swept away in the house. He never found their bod­ies. An­other man, while I was do­ing vol­un­teer work in the vicin­ity of his de­mol­ished house, ap­proached me to ask what I was do­ing. When he learned who I was work­ing with and what we were do­ing, he be­gan to tear­fully tell me about be­ing in the apart­ment build­ing just be­hind us, with his wife and 3 year old daugh­ter. When they saw the mud wave rolling in from the fields be­low, he shouted to his wife to get out of the house. He grabbed his daugh­ter and started run­ning up the val­ley, away from the on­com­ing mud wave. His wife, how­ever, de­cided that she needed to gather a few valu­ables be­fore es­cap­ing and while still in the apart­ment, the mud wave en­gulfed the house and crushed it. The fa­ther had man­aged to run far enough up the val­ley to reach the point where the mud wave let off. Weep­ing, he re­peated over and over that his daugh­ter kept ask­ing when they could go home to see mother.

My vol­un­teer group’s re­spon­si­bil­ity was to search for fam­ily pho­tographs amidst the ru­ins. It seems like an easy job, but climb­ing amidst all that de­bris, in the heat and rain, and even snow, while wear­ing lay­ers of pro­tec­tive cloth­ing, hel­met, boots, gloves, face mask, and over layer of red uni­form so that we would be iden­ti­fi­able to both lo­cals and the pos­si­bil­ity of in­jury or death, was hot and ex­haust­ing work. We lifted thou­sands of beams and met­als sheets, dug through silt-​​clogged old bags, broke open or­phaned cab­i­nets, and once even stum­bled through a wooded area with a fish­ing boat sus­pended above in the tree canopy as it creaked and groaned in the wind, just out­side our cir­cle of safety. The worst mo­ment for me was one freez­ing, rainy morn­ing, while I was dig­ging, with a pho­tog­ra­pher from the Asahi Shim­bun news­pa­per pho­tograph­ing me, through the foun­da­tions of a house that had been washed away. I came upon the re­mains of a teenage girl’s bed­room, her col­or­ful pho­tographs of her and her friends, her col­lec­tion of stuffed dolls, her lit­tle pa­per boxes of plas­tic jew­elry and trin­kets, her wads of sop­ping wet clothes, even her cell phone,adorned with glit­tery, stick-​​on glass beads, all strewn about the grey, muddy ground, rain soak­ing every­thing, me and the pho­tog­ra­pher soaked to the bone and cold. It all hit me at once, I was hold­ing a pho­to­graph of the girl smil­ing into the cam­era with her chi­huahua, and I started sob­bing. I couldn’t stop. The pho­tog­ra­pher him­self slumped onto a mud-​​covered log, and just sat there, in shock, not car­ing that his cam­era and cloth­ing were get­ting soaked. The leader of our vol­un­teer group had to come over and coax us to stand up and get back to work. “You didn’t come here to feel sorry for your­selves, right?” he asked us. “You came here to be strong for the peo­ple who re­ally lost some­thing here, right? You can cry later. Right now we re­ally need to do this.” He wasn’t be­ing cold or heart­less; he’d seen a lot of new­com­ers like us break down like that.

As I gained con­fi­dence and ex­pe­ri­ence, a real sense of ca­ma­raderie de­vel­oped with both the sur­vivors and with the vol­un­teer work­ers. We could even say we were en­joy­ing work­ing to­gether and giv­ing each other courage. The week went by more quickly. Vol­un­teers came and went. Those of us who had stayed longer took on the lead­ing roles and watched those who were deal­ing with the shock of the enor­mity of the dis­as­ter. We gath­ered thou­sands of photographs,cleaned them of sand and salt and mud, hung them up to dry. News re­porters and cam­era crews from all over Japan came to in­ter­view us and film us, and our group be­came known as the “Mem­ory Seek­ers”. One mem­ber, a 72 year old su­per­hero who had dri­ven all the way up from south­ern Japan, be­came a na­tional celebrity and even had a doc­u­men­tary made of him. Towns­folk came up to us to tear­fully thank us for help­ing them find and pre­serve their pre­cious memories.

It was both hard and easy to leave all this. Hard, be­cause I had made some good friends and felt I had done some­thing of some value. Easy be­cause I was ex­hausted and sad and filled with more than I could han­dle. I wanted to get home, feel safe again, wake up to a quiet morn­ing with­out the gun­ning gen­er­a­tors and cranes and bull­doz­ers chug­ging through the air. The daily earth­quakes, one of them a mag­ni­tude 7.2 that shud­dered through the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter like a de­railed train and ac­tu­ally did more dam­age than the big earth­quake in March, were rat­tling my nerves. And I just wanted to for­get about all the de­struc­tion and death. It was enough.

Dri­ving back to Tokyo was a quiet, al­most rev­er­en­tial time. We hardly spoke. We passed through Sendai, whose dam­age was on a scale so hugely wide that we drove through ut­terly speech­less. It went on for kilo­me­ter af­ter kilo­me­ter af­ter kilo­me­ter, all the way to the hori­zon, an end­less brown blan­ket of mud and de­bris where once rice fields painted the en­tire coast­line bright green.

Earth­quakes were still daily rock­ing Tokyo when we got back. There would con­tinue to be earth­quakes for months still. But To­hoku al­ways lies in the back of my mind. So much of what goes on in Tokyo now, what so many peo­ple con­sider vi­tal to every­day life seems friv­o­lous and petty. And I won­der how it would have been had the earth­quake been much worse here in Tokyo? Who would have come to help us? Could we even have sur­vived? And what of Fukushima? A hole in the heart of Japan. I will prob­a­bly be think­ing about how I’ve changed for many years to come. Will I ever be the same?