IT’S A SICKENING feeling when a news broadcast goes from being part of the background noise to your entire focus of attention. Conversation dies in the throat and suddenly the outside world seems more real than anything happening around you.
Often this is because an event is particularly horrifying, or feels personal to you: for me, and many others in Ireland with strong links to Japan, the tsunami and earthquake of 11th March 2011 was both.
The coverage of the disaster that morning showed aerial footage of a landscape torn apart, with buildings in ruins and green fields being subsumed by a remorseless swell of water, now turned black from the debris it already carried. The water looked like tar but moved with savage speed and consumed trees, roads, cars and houses as I watched.
What stopped me in my tracks though was that I recognised those trees, I could identify those cars, and while I had never stood in those particular buildings I had lived and worked in ones very much like them. For three years in the mid 2000s I taught English as part of the Japanese Government’s Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, which enables people from all over the world to work in Japan’s state schools and civic offices.
Although my own town was just outside the southern city of Osaka, more than 500 miles away from the ones I now saw being destroyed in the Tohoku region, they were unmistakably part of the same society. The off-camera screams were in a language I understood. I was unable to just turn off the TV and get on with my day.
In the weeks that followed it became obvious that I was far from alone. The number of Japanese citizens in Ireland is relatively small, with an estimated 1500 based here permanently or temporarily. However, the wider community of Japan in Ireland is greatly expanded by the number of people like myself who lived in the country for some time, or have family and friends there.
While in the immediate aftermath the natural priority was to establish that loved ones were safe, this was swiftly followed by an enormous desire to help. Long-established cultural and economic organisations like the Ireland-Japan Association co-ordinated donations from the general public, and quickly directed a great deal of money to the Red Cross.
Yet huge funds were also raised locally by the likes of Japan Tsunami Aid Limerick, Galway for Japan Day, and Aid Japan (Dublin); small, ad-hoc groups of Irish, Japanese and other international people brought together in response to the tragedies.
The importance of this kind of support was brought home to me last October, when I had the chance to visit the small city of Rikuzentakata in Iwate prefecture – one of those closest to the epicentre of the earthquake. On March 10th Rikuzentakata had a population of 24,246 people; the day after, 2,000 of them were killed and 13,000 were missing or displaced. Driving into the town six months after the event was the most surreal experience I have ever had.
The Tohoku region is agricultural, and fabulously green and uncrowded by Japanese standards. Due to the vagaries of the coast line some parts of the land were protected from the waves, and passing from rice paddies and farm houses into a genuinely post-apocalyptic landscape in the blink of an eye was utterly disorienting.
In the middle of green fields hundreds of twisted cars were stacked on top of each other, glinting in the sunlight. According to Japanese regulation all cars must be officially de-registered by their owner before disposal, and with so many owners dead or missing the authorities had no option but to tow the cars to the outskirts and pile them up.
The cars themselves were dwarfed by huge hills of metal, wood, masonry and plastic cleared from the destroyed streets and buildings. The tsunami had destroyed the entire centre of the city, and the people of Rikuzentakata were effectively living in the ruins of its constituent parts.
I was there to volunteer with the clean-up operation as part the International JET Alumni Association, following its official meeting in Tokyo. The Association represents the interests of the 53,000 former participants in the JET Programme, and is active in 17 countries. Meeting the other visiting country representatives demonstrated that the huge response seen in Ireland from those linked with Japan was echoed all over the world.
The fundraising efforts undertaken were too numerous to count, but there were also many on-the-ground projects organised or assisted by current JET participants in response to immediate need. Very shortly after the disaster an American, Paul Yoo, set up the ‘Fruit Tree Project’ which distributed fresh fruit to people in emergency shelters, supplementing their government supplied food. The delivery method was simple – JETs from surrounding areas bought the fruit, loaded up their cars and drove it to the shelters.
The vast majority of volunteers working on the ongoing clean-up were of course Japanese, but again and again during the time we spent in Rikuzentakata people thanked us for the support of our countries.
The actual work we did was less than a drop in the ocean: after registering at the Disaster Relief Centre and being issued with safety gear and shovels, we were directed to a field which needed to be hand-cleared to save the topsoil mechanical diggers would tear up.
Standing on the blackened surface it was impossible to know where to start, but as we dug through the muddy layers we began to uncover window frames, electrical wiring, and the tatami reed mats which are used as flooring in so many Japanese homes. The wreckage had once been a house, and digging further we found the belongings of its inhabitants: teacups, books, bedclothes. Photo albums. A school uniform. It was heart-rending and back-breaking work, and yet it has been the daily life of thousands of people for a year now.
Later we met the Mayor, Futoshi Toba (pictured below), who made it clear that everyday life in the city had been all but destroyed. Among the 2,000 dead were one third of the city’s municipal employees, while almost all the rest – including the mayor himself – had lost spouses or children. With no focal places to gather, there was a real risk of the town’s social fabric disintegrating.
Yet he was not hopeless; sitting in a classroom in what had been the Board of Education but was now acting as city headquarters, he spoke of progress - “Since the grocery store re-opened, people have started to come out into the community again."
He pointed out the decorations in the city’s makeshift offices; hundreds of flags, banners and posters carrying messages of condolence and support from all over the world. One of the city workers told me that looking at them every day made her feel “that we are not lonely”.
At the end of the meeting the Mayor asked us to encourage school children in our own countries to write letters to their counterparts in Japan. One of the reasons we had volunteered in Rikuzentakata particularly was that the city is one of two whose JET teachers lost their lives in the disaster.
Monty Dickson had moved there from Alaska in 2009 and his students wanted to write to other English speakers about him, Mayor Toba told us. Among the current JET participants with us was Steven Wilson, who had been a hometown friend of Monty’s.
He offered the mayor a bouquet of flowers in sympathy for the loss of his wife and so many fellow community members. The Mayor responded simply “Thank you for thinking of us. Thank you for coming back.”
Charis Hughes is Chairperson of the Irish JET Alumni Association
A recital of Handel’s Messiah by the all-female Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin choir from Japan will be held on today at 8pm in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, to mark the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
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