Onagawa, Part 2

In this post I'll start by posting some pictures and talking about the work I did in Onagawa.

Moving donated tatami mats between gyms to give to refugees.

Volunteering happened in two shifts each day, 9-12 and 1-4. I had to bring all my own food, but water, energy drinks, and much of the equipment was provided by donations.

The first afternoon I went with the crew to a fishing warehouse on the waterfront. The job was essentially sorting rubble: metal, wood, clothes, electronics all in different piles to be taken to the mountains of trash. Japan in July is extremely hot, so a lot of care was taken to stay well-hydrated.

Another day I spent most of the time in the Onagawa hospital, moving couches and chairs and disposing of hospital beds and other damaged equipment. Something very impressive to see was that all the clocks in the building were stopped at the same time, reflecting when the tsunami came through.

My friend Stephen had a contact in Onagawa, a friend of a friend named Fujinaka. Mr. Fujinaka is a middle school science teacher, but speaks great English and is involved in almost everything going on in the town. He's now living in one of the container homes, as his house was destroyed by the tsunami.

One morning Fujinaka-sensei took me, Stephen, and Stephen's girlfriend Anna on an early morning hike on the ridges around Onagawa.

I love you, Japan. That's the outline of the Tohoku region (northeastern Japan), rendered as a smiling hiker.

The fishing warehouse I worked at is the third dock jetting out into the water here.

The fourth day of volunteering, we went to a small fishing village on an island off the coast called Izushima. The cranes hadn't been to Izushima yet, so it was in a similar state to how it ended up after the tsunami.

By this point I had gotten close with the group of volunteers. They were happy, hardworking, and extremely welcoming to me and the other two foreigners (we were the only foreign volunteers in Onagawa at the time, except for a group of Scientologists (seriously) who stuck to themselves and worked from a different base in a different part of town). Some of them had been there for almost three months, and there were frequent late evening get-togethers with beers or sake around a table where I learned a ton of interesting Japanese, like the proverb that was translated to:

"When I want to see my lover's face, I wish the moon was a mirror to reflect her image to me."

It's a lot prettier and simpler in Japanese.

The work on Izushima was heavy. We cleaned out another fishing warehouse, moving all the trash and rubble outside of the building so it could later be taken away by heavy machines. During the lunch break, the local fishermen (and woman) caught sea urchins off the dock and gave them to us to eat. This was my first experience with raw uni, and it was pretty delicious, if weird. You just turn them over, crack them open, and either pull or lick out the meat. Apologies for my hair in these pictures.

The kicker was that even after I ate this little dude's guts, his spines were still moving around autonomously...

Dock cracked by the earthquake.

Our warehouse near the end of the day.

On the way back from the island.

One great thing about the sports center was all the kids around. They were playing, going to school where they could, and getting on with life. We played with them for a while one afternoon, going down a slide on the hill above the center.

My last day volunteering I spent hauling boxes of supplies in an elementary school. Dozens of messages and letters and pictures from Canada and America were posted up on the wall.

I spent a brief bit of time in the photo room before I moved on to the school, and I came back later to take some pictures, as strange as that felt.

When clearing rubble, we trashed everything except pictures. Whenever we came across pictures we would put them in a separate bin and bring them back to the center. There, they were cleaned and sorted and put in new albums. One picture from each album was put up on a steadily growing wall where people could come and look to see if they could find their pictures.

It was an amazingly poignant representation of the lives of a group of people. 90% of these people are still alive, but so much of the structure and detail of their lives has been washed away.

But here's the thing. Onagawa is teeming with new life. Certainly not in the devastated city center, but there is rejuvenation everywhere.

There was an incredible sense of connectedness and community at the center, everyone saying hi to each other and welcoming whatever new members moved in and out as the days passed. There are all sorts of new ideas moving in and around Onagawa, not just about how to rebuild the town but about how to make it better than it was when it does get rebuilt.

There's a new radio station, staffed by local guys who used to be shut-ins. There's a local newspaper, a first for Onagawa. A national education activist has moved there to generate and use new ideas to completely reform and redirect Japan's rigid, destructive school system. The people who work there know who they're working for and why, there is no ambivalence and very little bureaucratic red tape. It was thrilling to join that even for a few days and see that these people weren't sinking into their tragedy or dwelling on it, they were looking ahead and moving to the future.

"Fight/Stay strong"

"Fight/Stay strong, Onagawa!"

I'll post a third part soon about my own contribution to Onagawa and the symbolism of cherry trees.