All through those 2011 months of high humidity and low spirits we were in limbo. A little bit like the proverbial rabbit hypnotized by the snake. Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book comes to mind: all of us the monkeys, the Bandar-log, compelled to listen to Kaa’s song. We ate and drank, and work resumed as if nothing much had happened.
There were enormous piles of wreckage and garbage everywhere, Yotsukura port was a giant dump for months on end, and I could not believe my eyes when after half a year all that junk began to disappear again. While your author sat in his kitchen chair and read and tried to understand – the Japanese didn’t dither much. They are an incredibly well organized and determined people, and they are used to catastrophes. All through the ages Japan has known earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and fires. This may explain why and how they are so good at cleaning up after a messy incident like an M 9.0 megaquake, or a tsunami that reached a height of forty meters in some places.
The incantations you saw everywhere, like “Fight, Yotsukura!”, “Don’t give up, Fukushima!”, “Go for it, Japan!” began to grow sparser in autumn. Fewer and fewer cars had stickers of “HOPE!” on their bumpers.
Where did all that awful stuff go, then? Part of the tsunami debris was pulled out to sea, of course. The Japanese government’s estimates are on the low side, presumably, but they say that a total of 20 million tons of garbage was created on that cold afternoon of March 11, 2011. Of these twenty million tons, fifteen million tons are thought to have been deposited on Japanese shores again, the remaining 5 million tons of, quote “collapsed houses, cars, woods, ships, aquaculture facilities, fixed fishing nets, cargo containers, etc.” went out to sea. Much of it was expected to sink, some has been collected, but a certain portion of it would nevertheless reach the west coast of the American continent by April 2013, calculations showed.
I remember some stories of a Japanese fishing boat washed ashore in Oregon. On the website of the BBC you’ll find some more incredible journeys documented. How about a ghost ship? The 50-meter Ryou-Un Maru, a boat for sale in Hachinohe, Japan, that tore loose from its moorings during the tsunami, reached British Columbia in 2012. It was crewless, awfully corroded and had to be sunk by naval cannon fire. (Must have been fun) Or, how about a Harley Davidson? It had been stored in a container by its owner and was found on Graham Island, British Columbia in April 2012. The most heartwarming story BBC give in their “Japan’s tsunami debris: Five remarkable stories” article is that of Misaki Murayama’s football. Misaki Murayama is from Rikuzentakata, a town that was devastated by the tsunami. I saw it, years after the disaster, and it is mindboggling how hard that town was struck. Misaki lost everything on March 11, 2011, fortunate to have saved his life. And then, he got his football returned! It was found on Middleton Island, Alaska, by a radar technician whose Japanese wife could read the inscription on the ball.
It was a good time for beach combing! I myself found a wrecked yacht, useless to me, and some very nice wooden planks that had been torn off the pier in Onahama, 10 miles south. I could identify those easily, having often walked them. I pried loose two or three of them, planning to get more soon, but then a typhoon washed the rest away again.
More flotsam, something very special, actually, from Onahama: the Freydis II, an ocean going yacht of special fame. It’s a long story, told here in outline only. An old friend of mine visited unexpectedly. “We’ve got to do something! We have to help save the Freydis!” Imai-san, a sailor himself, lower arms as strong as Popeye’s, had already begun the hard job of salvaging the red yacht of renown. 248,000 nautical miles all across the globe’s oceans, wintering in Antarctic waters, and now: the sad end. Torn loose, like so many other yachts inside Onahama’s “Sun Marina”, it had been thrown on some rocks nearby. Built to withstand arctic ice with its extra strong bottom, it was damaged but not destroyed on March 11, 2011 before an unusually early typhoon did it in for good. I got involved in Mr. Imai’s efforts at that point only. The owners, Heide and Erich Wilts from Germany, had given up on their treasured boat because of radioactive contamination by then. This created a host of problems. Whose property, exactly, was the boat now? Who was entitled to deal with the wreck at all? Who was going to pay for its removal?
Imai-san was at work for weeks, consulting authorities, lawyers, the previous owners, all the while trying to raise money for the salvaging. Plus, he was set on making this special boat into a kind of monument. I tried to help the best I could, accompanying him here and there, contacting international media, even the German embassy, to no avail. After months the boat was cut up and hoisted up the cliff onto a parking lot. Hard and dangerous work, done by expert workers who were in high demand that summer. So many shipwrecks all along the coast! The most often photographed wreck must have been either the Kyotoku-Maru or the Myoojin Maru No. 3, both in Kesennuma.
It is mind boggling to see all that carnage up the Sanriku Coast, hard hit, and not for the first time. Three times during the last century that coast, so beautiful to look at, those towns and cities in far away Iwate Prefecture experienced devastating tsunamis, and three times they rebuilt. I saw little of the mayhem before I finally had the chance to go up there, years after “that day”, and I saw an amazing will to overcome all hardship. Why didn’t I go there earlier? Wasn’t I near enough to go there on a day trip? Yes, I was. And no, I didn’t feel the slightest little bit like going there. I saw destruction right in my little village. I saw fishing boats on the road in Yotsukura port, saw washed-away houses and what not. Everywhere I went I witnessed my fill of destruction.
Even if it was nothing compared to the wipe out towns and cities along the Sanriku Coast experienced – Iwaki suffered as well. And even if Onahama Port was not hit as hard as the cities and towns up north, to name and salute just a few: Matsushima, Ishinomaki, Okawa, Onagawa, Minamisanriku, Kesennuma, Rikuzentakata, Ofunato, Kamaishi, Otsuchi, Miyako, or Taro, (nicknamed: Tsunami-Taro ) much was destroyed here, too. The Freydis was not the only wreck – but it was the only one whose cut-up hull I entered. In the grime and ooze Imai-san and I found a few things we saved: ruined binoculars, some playing cards, and a nautical chart of some forgotten coast somewhere in the Caribbean. Where are these mementos now? I tried to hang on to the chart, as I love maps – but the rest? Long gone, gone with the wind.
The Freydis now sits, in part due to Imai’s efforts, in part thanks to others’, in the school yard of an Iwaki High School, located in Izumi, rather far from the sea, collecting dust. Intrepid Heide and husband Erich had a new boat built (called Freydis III) and continue to sail the world. How I wish I could sail away with them!