My Trip through the Aftermath of the Japanese Tsunami

A weekend of digging mud is not enough. There is too much to do and I feel guilty being back to Tokyo.

After a weekend in the Sendai and Ishinomaki area, I am both in awe by nature’s power and depressed by the seemingly insurmountable cleanup challenge ahead.

Hundreds of miles of complete devastation are currently being attacked by a handful of poorly equipped, unpaid volunteers whose numbers dwindle every day. Have the people of Japan and the world already forgotten about the worst natural disaster in modern history?

As part of an international group of Tokyo business people, we were welcomed with open arms by the scattered groups involved over the weekend of June 3-5. Here is my trip.

Tsunami

Perhaps a bold claim, but I truly believe a tsunami to be the most dangerous and devastating natural disaster possible. It does not have the wind of a hurricane, but it has just as much destructive power in the form of a wave, or rather, a river. Yet it comes without warning whereas residents are often given days warning with hurricanes.

It has the immediacy of an earthquake or tornado, but unlike those it allows no place for escape. A tsunami clears everything in its path, leaving nothing for survivors to reclaim of their previous lives.

I consider this tsunami, hitting a first world country, causing billions of dollars of losses and thousands of lives, to be the worst possible. More lives may have been lost elsewhere, but nothing comes close in terms of the combination of lives and economic impact.

Sendai

The city of Sendai is located inland from the coastal city of Ishinomaki. Sendai took the full brunt of a 9.0 earthquake.

Yet, 3 months later, the city is booming with barely a trace of earthquake damage. The train station was more crowded than any I have seen and the streets were busy with businessmen. The elevator to our hotel was still turned off, most likely due to some structural damage to the older building, but brand new skyscraper Westin was booked full and the elevators were churning like pistons.

It was almost too normal. So much so, that I jumped out of my seat on the bus to take pictures when I first saw a boarded up window at a local restaurant. A few blocks later, a car dealership was under scaffolding to remodel some infrastructure cracks. This was the equivalent of getting punched in the toe by an ant compared to the Mike Tyson furry ahead.

Ishinomaki

As we approached the coast, I saw an upside-down car in a field. Again, I scrambled to get pictures. Slowly the debris scattered fields increased until we saw our first building with damage. Realizing we were still miles from the shore, I began to pace my photo-taking.

Close to 8am, we pulled up late to the local Peaceboat camp, a cleared out apparel warehouse serving as our basecamp for daily work, and began to get a grasp of what lie ahead.

This was the field in the videos that showed the burning houses floating in the tsunami

A Peaceboat local hub

My group, bundled up and ready to work

A couple dozen volunteers were sleeping at this facility, sweating away during the day, yet unable to shower other than a fully clothed hosedown in the evening. The port-a-potties were functional and they were well stocked with shovels, wheel-barrows, hoes, brooms, bags for mud, bags for debris, bicycles, pick axes, and other landscaping tools. I now knew we would not be building houses on this trip…no, that will not come for a long time.

The Park

We split up in groups and we were assigned to clean a park. Seeing the carnage of the empty houses and buildings as we walked down the street, I began to question the logic of cleaning a park. But, it was explained to me that families cannot come back to their homes until there is a place for the kids. The streets and neighborhoods are too dangerous with glass, nails and rust everywhere. There has to be a place for the kids to play while the parents come back and work on their homes.

Carnage in this town

The walk to the park

The park was a mile and a half from the seashore. The wave was not powerful enough at this point to knock over houses entirely, but at 6 to 10 feet high, it flooded the bottom floors, sank and ruined foundations and streets, and threw floating cars into houses that caused severe damage.

Our job was to clear the debris that had been dumped there by the first response crews to initially clear the streets, plus the debris dumped there by the tsunami. Then, we were to shovel off the top 3-9 inches of toxic mud – a mix of dirt, oil and other chemicals, class, nails, books, toothbrushes, photo albums, wires, hoses, dolls, bowls, and anything else you can find on the first floor inside or outside of a house – that is left everywhere in every city. If we could get the mud out, in time, grass would grow through.

A swing from a pick axe into the mud from a group member hit a compressed-gas camping container that exploded in his face. Scary, but no damage. A dangerous place for sure. This took us an entire day.

The old man next door to the park was a survivor. He appreciated our help in clearing the park and was able to talk about the immediate neighborhood. The lady living on the other side of the park had died. The house next to that had sank by a few feet, was leaning awkwardly, and would have to be demolished. The couple across the street had died.

He told us how he was sitting on his front porch about 20 minutes after the massive earthquake when he saw the wave coming down the street. By the time he was able to get up his stairs, the water was up to his lower chest area. But, the water did not climb to his second floor. The water stayed for a week before he was able to walk outside of his house again. It was unclear to me how he survived during that week.

The old man on the far left lived next door to the park

The Park - After

Perhaps once a day, a truck would come by to load up the trash and mud we had organized. The IBM football team is rotating through smaller groups of players to volunteer for a week at a time. The guys are strong and energetic and are ideally suited for this teamwork job.

We managed to finish cleaning our park with a half hour to go and went to help the other group cleaning another park. They still had a long way to go, but 4pm came and we all had to get back for the curfew. For the comfort and safety of the residents, volunteers are not allowed on the streets after dark.

Back in Sendai for dinner, we enjoyed a local izakaya, and then were treated to a good swaying rumble of an earthquake in our beds around 1am.

Peaceboat

The group we volunteered for is called Peaceboat. They are the largest NPO (Non-Profit Organization) helping out in the region. They have just a few paid employees, but hundreds of volunteers. Our group of 40 was a huge boost to their spirits. Before Golden Week (first week of May), they had been getting up to 5000 volunteers per week to the area. After Golden Week, the numbers dropped considerably and they now have less than 1000 volunteers in the entire region.

The government troops and manpower number 6000, covering the whole coast. They are still searching for bodies and only focused on that task. They are a major force in the basic cleanup, having cleared all of the roads, but this primarily means moving rubble just enough to determine if there is a body underneath. That done, they move on to search for more bodies. 6000 troops covering 300 miles of coastline searching for 9000 missing bodies. They have worked incredible hard, undergoing severe mental stress having found some 15000 dead already, but there is still to much work to do.

The Red Cross is non-existent in the cleanup effort. I did not see a single Red Cross person in the time I was up there and nobody spoke of the Red Cross other than roll of the eyes, a frown, and a shake of the head. I understand that a lot of money – as much as 1/3rd of the $2.5 billion donated – has already been distributed to survivors, but I am also told that they face severe hurdles in figuring out who deserves what. From what I can tell, while they may distribute money to the survivors, very little money goes towards the cleanup. Money does go towards temporary shelters and support at evacuation centers, which is good to see. But, there seems to be a lot of disappointment with the all around accomplishment of such a large amount of money.

That is basically it as far as support goes. There are other groups, what I would call “guerrilla” operations, working to help in specific towns or roles. Most consist of 5-20 people and struggle to provide enough tangible manpower and supplies from supporters. That said, these groups can be very mobile and aggressive, creating order and solving problems much quicker than any government or even large NPO operation.

Mud

The second day of work brought us more mud to clear. This time we were given a house, but our work was only on the outside of the house. The yard was full of debris, which again needed clearing before we could attack the mud. And there was a storm drain in front of the house that was completely clogged.

My half of the group got the storm drain, a stinky, toxic mud-filled nightmare, leading into the rest of the city storm drains running through the neighborhood, which were also clogged as well. We removed the remaining cement block covers – those that had not been washed away – and went to work with the shovels, dumping mud, water, and whatever other surprises we found into biodegradable plastic bags. This is heavy work, but there are jobs for everyone. While I did the cement block lifting and mud shoveling, a 70-year old lady on our team held the mud bags for me. I carefully tried to aim as much mud into the bag as possible, trying to prevent spilling the filthy stench all over her.

Back at basecamp for lunch we felt a good, quick jolt of an earthquake. It was just a 3 on the Japanese scale, but centered just off the coast from us. One quick bam, no more than 1 second, and that was it.

Having cleared the storm drain in front of the house, we prayed that the next rain would not fill it up with the mud from the street or neighbors drain, but it was as much as we could do for them. We then moved on to clearing the rest of the yard with the other half of our group. We hauled enough junk out of there to fill a giant dumpster, but looking around at the neighboring streets and yards, it barely seemed to make a dent.

Before we cleared this yard. We were not allowed under the garage

So much work to do

At one point the son and daughter of the house’s owner came by to say thanks and check on things. Another man drove an hour and a half to bring the owner, his friend, a few bottles of drinking water, and left them on his porch. We never saw the owner. In two days on those streets, I saw less than five residents around the whole area, including the old man next to the park. Unfortunately, the streets are not busy from volunteers and workers either. The towns are eerily empty. Noise from a saw over here…a garbage pickup truck there…but mostly emptiness.

The drainage ditch

These houses have second story damage. Potentially a boat or car was sent crashing into them.

The lot we were working on cleaning

Water level line where the water sat for a week

Our work. The white bags are mud. The brown bags are small debris.

The near electric tower in this image was knocked over in the tsunami. It has been replaced.

O.G.A for Aid

On Saturday night, a “guerrilla” group called O.G.A. for Aid came and spoke to us about their operation. I was very impressed with what they are doing.

The group is small, but nimble. They are an international group started by an international family living in Aomori City. They have adopted the city of Minamisanriku, population 19000 before the tsunami, as their main relief focus and work on everything from food distribution in the city to finding people jobs to health care support. Below is a video of the tsunami hitting Minamisanriku, taken from a junior high school atop a hill above the city. The tsunami washes clear the entire city in less than 7 minutes.

The “international” part of this group is very important. They speak Japanese and are well ingrained in the Japanese cultural understanding, so they are able to communicate well with the locals. However, Japanese groups, or Japanese people in general, can be very structured, and thus timely, in their decision making processes. While this has proven to be a great power of large Japanese corporations, in times of emergency or stress it is good to have lower level workers able to make decisions on the fly. If a survivor tells a helper they need more of a certain supply, a normal Japanese worker would go away and report that to his boss, who may in turn report that to his boss, who might be able to make a decision on what to do. In the meantime, the survivor struggles and waits without that supply. This group, OGA, is able to make decisions on the fly and help people immediately, while reporting back to their leaders later who will then meet with town officials to work on a higher level, longer term solution.

(Note: I do not mean this in any disrespect to the Japanese way of a structured reporting and decision making system. I think it works well in large corporations. But, I also believe it is a hindrance during times like these. While up there, we heard of town government officials that could not provide local residents with answers because they were waiting for answers from the federal government. Meanwhile the Prime Minister is being run out of office, so nobody is at the top to make decisions…the decision making process is in a complete stall at the top right now and the local survivors are suffering because of it.)

Groups like OGA or Aid also provide advice and guidance at a time when it is lacking. The town hall of Minamisanriku was washed away, along with half of the city council. Records of residents, home ownership, even drivers licenses, are all gone. The city governments are truly struggling to operate on their own, if they still exist at all. Not to mention the guidance from above is completely stalled. Outsider advice is crucial.

I will continue to help O.G.A. for Aid going forward. They have a presence on Facebook and are posting smaller, timely, projects on their website. I plan on both providing them with some of these needs as well as trying to get back up there to help them in a hands-on matter. I am not sure if that will be possible, but the least I can do is provide help from Tokyo. At a minimum, I would ask that you please “Like” their Facebook page in support.

Fishing Industry

One of the extremely apparent issues that came up over the weekend, and especially in the OGA for Aid discussion, is the importance of the fishing industry. The town of Minamisanriku, and the hundreds of other 5k-20k person towns dotting the coast just like it, relied almost entirely on fishing industry jobs. As much as 80% of the jobs in these towns were in some relation to that industry. Having their boats, harbor, and equipment completely wiped away and destroyed has created a massive hurdle for job creation going forward.

A fisherman needs a boat, ropes, and a forklift as his main tools to start a business. The fisherman in these towns do not know much else besides this trade. But, with those three tools, they know how to run a successful business. From there, the supplementary businesses come back as well. The warehouse for packing and storage. The trucks for shipping. The accountants for bookkeeping. It all relies on a few boats, ropes, and forklifts.

There are many ideas floating around about teaching these people new skills. Computer experience or otherwise could be a great way to provide these people and towns with new hope in emerging industries. But, at the end of the day, a fisherman wants to fish. In order for any sort of revival in these towns, these three tools must be provided in one way or another.

Ishinomaki Grand Hotel

The last day of our trip was an educational day for us. It is strange to think that we needed to be educated as much as we were already seeing and learning. But, what we saw that Sunday was a lesson in devastation that is almost impossible to describe, yet I will never forget.

The first stop was the city center of Ishinomaki. Back in October of 2010, I visited this town with our basketball team, the Tokyo Apache, to play the Sendai 89ers. We stayed in the Ishinomaki Grand Hotel and took walks from there down to the riverfront. Stopping our bus next to this hotel was almost a blessing for me. I immediately knew where we were and took off running to take pictures of where I had stood just 8 months prior.

Ishinomaki Grand Hotel survived with just flood damage

Pray for Ishinomaki

Statue of the local action figure hero is still standing

This area was heavily flooded, up to 10 feet high, but did not take the brunt of the powerful wave. The hotel is not using the first floor yet, but it is letting government workers stay in the rooms while it undergoes repairs. The island we had walked to as a team was still there, although 3 of the 4 tress had been knocked over. One proud tree still stood. The park that runs along the rivers edge was beat up, but it still resembled a park. It was great to see.

Island park with the lone surviving tree

Riverfront park

Spaceship-shaped museum in the background

Elsewhere in the city center we were shown the central headquarters for the city base of Peaceboat (there is a separate volunteer/warehouse HQ we went to later in the day). This HQ is an old restaurant, cleaned up and loaned to the group to work from. They have maps, laptops, and lists in a control center on the second floor. On the first floor, volunteers cook for thousands each day, making huge pots of soups and other food and loading them into trucks to go out to evacuation centers.

The Harbor

From HQ, we headed to the coast, where my heart sank and hopelessness set in. I don’t know how to describe it. For about the last quarter to half mile from the coast to the water, there is nothing but wreckage and chaos.

This harbor area used to be busy with ships

Giant chemical containers rolled over and busted open

The area near the harbor is a mess. I have never smelled such an awful stink in my life. Dead fish everywhere mix with the spilled chemicals and bake in the sun to create an unimaginable odor.

I think this says "Gambate Ishinomaki" (Good Luck)

Rubble everywhere

Schools near the ocean acted as evacuation grounds for kids and locals after the earthquake. Those lucky enough to go back inside and make it up to the fourth floor before the tsunami hit were lucky enough to call it a safety shelter from the water. 300 survivors camped in Minato Jr High for three days with no help or information, waiting for the water to recede or help to arrive. The water stayed for a week, but fortunately help arrived sooner. Many people are still living in the classrooms and gymnasium, with nowhere else to go. The schools have started up again even while the gyms are full of evacuees. Some people refuse to leave the smaller classrooms for the more public large gymnasiums, so school classes have set up in other temporary locations instead.

The school

How some of these random houses managed to stand, I do not know

Where houses did survive near the coast, levees are busted and streets fill with water up to 3 feet high during high tide. Half of the day must be spent indoors while the tide is in.

Everywhere is trash. It is like the worlds largest garbage dump, except it was never meant to be trash. On March 10th, it was all useful stuff. The sea turned it into trash. In the video below, “Junior”, from Peaceboat, explains how the government workers do clear some debris, but their main job is searching for bodies.

Onagawa

North of Ishinomaki, we visited the town of Onagawa. Or, at least what used to be the town of Onagawa.

Onagawa took a direct hit from the tsunami. A small bay facing the east contained a city center near the harbor with three valleys running out of it between hills.

The entire valley of buildings, washed clear

We saw entire buildings rolled onto their side and upside down

The valleys acted as channels, focusing the intensity of the wave. A half mile from the ocean, and probably 30 feet above sea level, we drove past a 3-story building with a car upside on its roof. Then we drove past another one. These buildings are probably 60 feet high, so we’re talking about a 90+ foot (30+ meter) wave putting the car on this roof.

Everything thing in this town is destroyed. Nobody was working to fix anything. Troops were still searching for bodies. A volunteer we were with said the town looked the exact same as he saw it more than a month ago.

High up on the hill in the distance, a house was destroyed

The roads have been cleared...that's it

Only the few strong buildings remain standing in this town

Waterfront hotel

Onagawa train station

Lot's of wreckage left on the rooftop

This boat lies across a road hundreds of yards inland

Not much left of the harbor

Completely empty

Temporary Housing

Farther up one of the valleys, at the edge of where the water reached, temporary housing has been built with roughly 96 units. Each tiny unit will house 4 people. The Red Cross provided the extreme basics for each unit: a rice cooker, some toilet paper, and an emergency radio. Fortunately, Walmart chipped in and provided each place with an additional shipment of goods including futons and sheets, utensils and plates, and other household necessities.

The biggest problem with the temporary housing is the location. The government obviously refuses to build them back near the waterfront. However, as I mentioned before, all jobs revolve around the waterfront and the fishing industry. There is no transportation for people to get to and from the temporary housing, so they are being held captive from any job or business they could try to do for work.

At the same time, once people move out of the evacuation shelters and into the temporary housing, they are left to fend for themselves. They are not allowed to get in line for shelter food lines and are asked to pay for normal expenses like food and utilities. All of this is very hard to do with no job, no money (the banks – or mattresses for most old folks – were washed away too), and missing family member support.

The temporary housing situation is very grim.

Peaceboat HQ

Our last stop of the day was at Ishinomaki Senshu University, location of the main warehouse for Peaceboat, and the camping grounds for almost all volunteers arriving from around the country.

Thousands of tents use to line the grounds, but now only a few hundred remain. Volunteers check in at a main desk and are assigned to tasks. Most volunteers end up assigned to Peaceboat, where they work in one of the many locations or jobs Peaceboat has organized.

The warehouse is well stocked, but tiny compared to what I would expect for a warehouse providing supplies to an entire coast of devastation. It is manned by volunteers, so, while people work hard, it is not the most efficiently run operation. Our group has some Fed Ex contacts and I believe there is a logistics team that is going to head up to provide some help in managing the warehouse, incoming shipments, and outgoing deliveries to outbases.

After seeing the grounds, we sat down with Mr. Ito, who is in charge of the local association formed to help make decisions around the area. Lacking any government direction or organization, NPO’s and NGO’s decided they needed to communicate better with each other to become more efficient in their relief support. More than 100 groups have joined this associatoin and they meet regularly to discuss the situation. The groups have been divided up into 10 sub-sections (Mental Health, Medical Help, Cleanup, Food, etc.) and each section has their own discussions as well.

Mr. Ito explained to us many of the problems and what they are doing to combat each. Most of the problems I have already discussed, but the solutions for each are far less impressive. It is not Mr. Ito or the NPO’s fault. There are simply not enough people and firepower to help in an overwhelming situation.

Back Home

Upon arriving back in Tokyo, I told my Japanese friends about the lack of people and support up North. Amazingly, one friend was shocked. He said the news had been telling people not to go help because there were too many volunteers for the organizations to handle. To be fair, I had heard they were saying this during Golden Week, but I do not know if that has been the message since. If it has, it is the wrong one. Also, people are not encouraged just to go show up at random. You need to go up with a plan (camping equipment, food, water, and a destination). Don’t just get off the train at Sendai station and expect to be able to help someone.

But, if are able to go up there, I suggest taking camping equipment and heading to Ishinomaki Senshu University. From there, you can get involved with Peaceboat (let them know you are coming in advance), and if bilingual support is needed, they do have staff that can help you. There are buses from the campus each morning to take you to the local bases in each town. And from there, they will give you a team to join and shovels to work with.

It is exhausting work, but desperately needed. Peaceboat asks that you come for a full week at minimum. Looking at the destruction and mess, combined with the pace of work with the manpower available, and I think it will be years before we see reconstruction and revival of some of these towns. In the meantime, people will continue to try to survive through this emotional and physical nightmare.

The other option is to team up with a group like ours. We will try to head up again, and will stay in hotels near Sendai, and have our own buses organized for transportation. It is a more expensive route than camping, but it also allows one to be fully clean and rested for maximum productivity each day.

If you cannot provide hands-on support, I suggest donating to the productive organizations such as Peaceboat, or even the smaller ones such as OGA for Aid. And, unless you are able to coordinate the delivery of a specific good in a specific timeframe with a specific group, I suggest you donate money. Their needs change weekly and delivery to these locations can be very difficult. The groups I met are more capable of purchasing the supplies they need in a timely manner than most of us are able to provide for them.

I am now back home in Tokyo, but I will be heading up to help again as soon as my wife returns from her trip to LA. This is something she needs to see with her own eyes. Japan has been great to us since we’ve been here and this is a way we can give back. This is a situation that we will most likely never see again. The worst type of natural disaster, stemming from the biggest earthquake, hitting a first world country that I call home. I can only hope it never happens again.

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