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Lending a helping hand to Ishinomaki

By on June 8, 2011
It will be 20 years this autumn since I first  visited Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture.  In fact Ishinomaki would be my home for three months while I studied at Sendai Ikue High School for a year. I lived with the Kato family in their home on Daikanyama and experienced my first earthquake there. I was not to know, however, that 20 years later Daikanyama would be one of the few places in all of Ishinomaki not to be destroyed by the immense force of a great tsunami. No one knew.

That was all to change at 2:46 pm on March 11th, 2011 when a magnitude 9 earthquake, its epicenter less than 60 km away from Ishinomaki, sent a massive tsunami towards the North Eastern coast of Japan. The tsunami struck with great  force less than 30 minutes after the first earthquake but instantly changed the lives of millions up and down the pacific coast of Honshu, Japan.

My last visit to Ishinomaki, just over one month after the tsunami, left me speechless and immensely saddened by the destruction that I saw there. We had driven all night from Nagano, in three vans full of supplies bound for Ishinomaki and arrived at 5:30 am, at the Minato Elementary School, which was still being used as an emergency shelter since the day of the tsunami. The front grounds of the school were being used as a parking area for the Self Defense Force, their tents, a temporary bath house and the volunteer centre, which, we were informed by friends was where we should sign in for volunteer duty. It was still too early to sign in so I drove off to see if I could find my host family of 20 years past.

The roads were muddied, pot holed and lined with the remains of broken homes, crushed cars, felled power poles and lines, broken glass and all manner of garbage left in the wake of the tsunami. I managed to find my way to the Katos’ home and knocked at the front door. I was met with a look of surprise by who would later be introduced to me by my host brother as his wife. I sat down with the whole family for breakfast as I had done many times before. We talked of the good old days and of the recent disaster. There were many stories to be told. How the tsunami did not hit their house, but had destroyed the father’s car dealership and all the cars there. How the earthquake had shaken everything from the walls and how the smoke from the fires that distroyed the neighborhoods at the bottom of their street, had spewed smoke for four days across Daikanyama. How they lived without electricity for weeks and lived with multiple tremors each day. All in all they were the fortunate ones and they knew it and thus down played any hardships that they had endured. I promised to visit again in two nights’ time for dinner and proceeded to drive back to the volunteer center to start in whatever needed doing.
 
Over the next three days our group of nine, from Nagano and Nigata, assisted in clearing debris and mud from five different homes in the area. At first it seemed futile. The homes were still standing but the windows were smashed, the interiors  were wall to wall mud and all possessions inside destroyed. We carried out everything from bedding and books to televisions and refrigerators to add to the heaping piles of garbage already in the streets from the other houses. We shoveled out buckets upon buckets of black mud that was dug up from the seabed by the tsunami and dumped thick across the land and that layered the floors of all the homes in the area. When the homes had been cleaned out and any photos and other mementos picked out when the floorboards and front steps became visible this is when we realized that what we were doing was invaluable. This we knew by the smiles that had returned to the faces of the people who for the past month felt as though they had less than nothing, that all they had been left with was burden. That gaping hole inside them had finally been filled, if only slightly, with feelings other than sorrow and feelings of hope returned and laughter was heard.

Even though people’s livelihood and businesses were destroyed and their lives are still in upheaval today, the determination within the community is strong. Assistance and support from outsiders is still desperately needed not just for the clean-up efforts but because it shows that people around the country care. They care enough to give up a weekend or more to assist them, the strangers. For no other reason than they really need the help.

The people of Ishinomaki are still very unsure as to what the future holds for them. Whether they will be allowed to continue living in their homes, in the present location or whether they will have to move to higher ground. With the land in the area having sunk upwards of a meter and the high tide encroaching into town each day flooding roads and sometimes houses, there is a strong feeling that they will not be able to live there any more. But this said, there has been no official road map decided on yet as to where, when or how a new community will be built if the choice is made to move. Will their homes be spared or will they be demolished? Who will pay for their relocation if this is needed? National, prefectural or local government, a mix of all three or will the bill be handed to the people directly? There are many questions still unanswered but the one thing that is for sure is that the people here in Ishinomaki and along the coast still need our assistance. That assistance may be in the form of fund-raising events, donations, creation of business in the region, reintroduction of tourism to surrounding areas or you may even decide to go there in person and lend a helping hand. Whatever you decide, any decision to help is the right decision. Ganbare Ishinomaki, ganbare Nippon!
 
Miyagi Volunteer Centre web page:
http://msv3151.c-bosai.jp/index.php
This site is only in Japanese but can be seen in English on the Google  Chrome browser.

All photos of Ishinomaki are copyright Kato Masato. Please view: www. youtube.com/user/bluesfile for his beautifully done view of the Minato Shogako area pre Golden Week.

Dave Enright is a 17 year resident of Hakuba, Nagano and the owner and director of the Evergreen Outdoor Center. This summer Evergreen will donate 2% of their revenue to the Ishinomaki relief effort and sponsor children from Ishinomaki to join  their International Summer Camps in the Alps.

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