Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Ready or Not with a Lot to Think About

I made an early morning run to Sendai to check on Samaritan’s Purse. Almost down to the walls and floors prior to their relocation, but did get blankets, cook kits, hygiene kits, and water jugs. Potential good news: they’re opening a branch warehouse in Tome which is quite close to the dojo. New crew last night brought a refrigerator to supplement the small one at the dojo. Yea!

In the loaded van from just in from Osaka, the freshly loaded K truck, and Maya in her own car, we headed for Kitikamigawa, once again with a special cargo, this time of milk, yogurt and eggs for the obasan across the street from the post office. Instead of setting up at the post office in the middle of the village, we went to the bank at the northeast end, which was operating out of the second floor. It took longer to set everything out on the tarp than it did for the people to pick it up, that’s how fast it went. Then the people in the bank invited us in for coffee so how could we leave? Beth and some of the ladies on our team had actually just been across the street where they’d seen a gaijin (foreigner), rare in these parts; her name was Sarah and she was from Australia. Her house was behind the one across from the bank.

Sarah was a school teacher at the school at the mouth of the river, and she told them that out of 100 students only 22 survived, and out of the school teachers, two or three. She said that the water came up to her head and she prepared herself to die.

Next stop the rojin home, with milk and meat and MELONS (special request), and a nice long visit to hug and talk and listen. In my charming way (why did they keep laughing?), I practiced my fractured Nihongo and asked everyone how many kids they had and they asked the same of me.

One last stop on our tour of the river past where I’d been, but I first got to take a picture of a house I’d seen earlier where the tsunami had left half the house untouched but swept through the other half, basically sucking out the living area and just leaving beams and cabinets overhanging. . .nothing. And the first time I saw the kitchen wall it took my breath away because I caught a glimpse of shiny pots and pans sitting in those cabinets. Carefully stacked and put away for the next meal maybe soon to start preparation, for a family where routine met oblivion in an instant. And those pans, forever frozen, forever waiting, brightly polished for a family they would never see again. Except when I finally took the picture today it looked like the pans were gone—maybe someone had taken them—possibly the only clean pots for miles.

But what Beth really wanted us to see (and before leaving to pray for the people they represent) were the school and city hall at the mouth of the river. It must have been a strong, modern, and proud city hall, constructed of reinforced concrete, reduced to a skeleton from a post-nuclear movie. The sight of the school with its clock still frozen at 2:46 that made us fall silent in a vain attempt to grasp the horror of the insatiable wall of water cruelly taking the children first. So we got out to meditate and to take pictures and to watch the heavy equipment rebuilding the sea wall.

As we gathered to pray Maya wanted us to know that the people we had given food to earlier knew that our group was special because we took time to actually talk to them and also because we were the only group that passed out things like tsukemeno (salt-pickled fruit and vegetables because these were the things they used to season their rice, and these were the flavors of their lives.

Then Maya told us the rest of the story of the school. After the earthquake the children were so scared that one teacher volunteered to drive them to their homes and parents where they could be safe and comforted. No one expected a tsunami to breach the sea wall or reach the coastal villages, but it came while the bus was driving up the river and the whole busload was swept away, no one surviving except the teacher driving it. That’s why so many of the children died. And all the parents demanded to know why did you take our children away. They cried to the bus driver, give us our children back. Finally just in the last few days, the driver couldn’t take anymore and committed suicide. And Maya told us there were many instances of good people doing what they thought was the right thing, doing what they knew best, but guessing wrong, and turned into pariahs, instead of being recognized for their good intentions. What a fine line it is that separates the living from the dead, the heroes from the hapless. Which of these people were ready for what came—physically or spiritually?