Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, my friend Paul and some other guys started a volunteer group called Volunteer Akita (https://volunteerakita.wordpress.com/) with the goal of helping out tsunami victims. The tsunami hit the east coast of Tohoku (northern Japan). Akita is in the NW, so we were not affected. Directly to the east of Akita are the prefectures of Iwate and Miyagi, both of which were heavily damaged. Fukushima, home of the nuclear power plant disaster, is several hundred kilometers south.

In the past two months, the Volunteer Akita group has done various things (volunteering for orphanages, delivering toys, volunteer cleaning at Miyako). What I got involved in for Golden Week was the Fruit Tree Project (https://volunteerakita.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/tohoku-relief-the-fruit-tree-project-fund-proposal-2/). Paul and Minami made a website, and many of us solicited donations from across Japan and other countries, with the express goal of providing 2 pieces of fruit for each person in 3 shelters in Kesennuma (気仙沼), a town in Miyagi Prefecture. This is because Paul and Minami had spoken with an organizer for the shelter at Kesennuma Elementary School, and the organizer had requested two things: fresh fruit and furikake (spices used as rice seasoning). Two fruit markets, one in Honjo and one near Kesennuma offered to sell us fruit at wholesale rates. Golden Week came around, the donations came in, and we got ready to go. Thank you, everyone who contributed!

It turns out we had a large amount of cash from donations, but not enough to do two pieces of fruit for 10 days as originally hoped. After talking with the shelter leaders, we decided to do one piece of fruit per person for as long as we could, which ended up being seven days. The shelters (避難所; hinanjo) we wanted to help were Kesennuma Elementary School (気仙沼小学校), Kesennuma Junior High School (気仙沼中学校), and the Kesennuma Community Center (気仙沼市民会館; shimin kaikan). At that time, there were about 139, 478, and 250 people living in them, respectively. And once we arrived, we found out that an additional 50, 300, and 300 nearby residents were dining at those shelters. That meant a delivery of at least 1517 pieces of fruit each day (we ordered by the box, so there was always some extra). The organizers at the shelters were very friendly, and the deliveries were rather smooth. It took about 2 hours each morning to pick up the fruit and drop it off at each shelter. On the last day, we delivered fruit to a 4th shelter -- Omose Junior High School (面瀬中学校). The fruit we purchased varied day to day. Bananas and oranges were the most common, because they're fairly cheap and also don't require any food preparation (Japanese people tend to peel apples, not eat them whole, you see). We also delivered some sunfruit (a type of orange), apples, and grapefruit, just to mix things up a bit. For more detail, see Paul's daily summaries: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7. Paul and Minami organized the project, and Todd and I helped with the manual labor.

In Kesennuma (and elsewhere in Japan too, presumably), most of the shelters are in schools. There aren't many churches in Japan, and for public buildings, schools are the most common, followed by community centers. School vacation in tsunami-struck places lasted until late April, and up to then, people staying in school shelters slept in classrooms. This was good, because it provided some degree of privacy. In Kesennuma Junior High School, many people still do sleep in classrooms. This is because the school building is somewhat old, and with school enrollment numbers declining over the past many years (like much of rural Japan), there are extra classrooms. The students use half of the school, and the shelter uses the other half. Kesennuma Elementary School, on the other hand, needed its classrooms back, so shelter residents had to move back into the gymnasium. Fortunately, the shelter obtained many large silver tents which they've erected in the gym. This isn't as good as separate rooms, and it'll be too hot in the summer (though it seems like temporary housing will be ready soon, so maybe that won't matter), but it's still some degree of privacy. Even then, not all of the people in the gym have tents -- some just sleep on the gym floor, in areas demarcated by 3 foot high cardboard walls. In fact, Omose Junior High School has no tents at all -- all of its 250+ residents sleep together on the gym floor.

Next to the shelters I visited, there was extensive construction to build temporary housing. The housing looked to be somewhat similar to mobile homes, and unfortunately the housing is probably poorly insulated, and certainly the houses are very close to each other. Probably because it is convenient to do so, the housing is being built on baseball fields (for example, Kesennuma Junior High School's sports ground and baseball field is being used), but this means sometimes there isn't enough room to spread things out. It also means the baseball club and various other outdoor clubs cannot practice there. Of course, currently the gymnasium is in use, and as long as that continues, the volleyball club and basketball club don't have practice space, and there's no good way to hold gym class. That is inconvenient for the students, though certainly there are other gyms and baseball fields across town which can be used instead. Because the temporary housing looks like it'll be used for a very long time, I wonder why they didn't seize local farmland and build temp housing there, since that would have both let the schools get back to normal and given the temporary housing enough space for properly spread out houses and parking and such. Then again, converting rice fields into land fit for housing probably involves moving a lot of dirt and gravel.

On May 3, there was a small kite festival at Kesennuma Elementary School for shelter residents. Nearby students showed up too, and a big group of ALTs came down from Akita -- Ryan, Jeff, Melissa, Selina, and Liyen. All the kids and several adults flew kites for a while. Later, Todd did some magic tricks with cards and coins. It was pretty impressive, and he was videotaped by NHK, but it wasn't aired. Earlier in the week Paul and I were interviewed by NBC, and later NHK interviewed Paul, Minami and me, but those also wasn't aired. The NBC crew explained that there was too much international news at that time (a wedding, a storm, and then OBL). I blindly speculate for NHK it's a little more delicate, because NHK is within Japan, and showing a story about a small volunteer group bringing fruit to shelters might be seen as highlighting how the shelters aren't providing proper nutrition, whether or not that's even the case. Japan's Self-Defense Force provides shelter meals, and I don't know much about their system, though it's clear that they're working quite hard. Certainly complaining would be unproductive — better to do something instead — thus, the Fruit Tree Project.

Paul and I have rather large SUVs, so we slept in our car 5 nights. One night, Jessica invited us to crash on her floor, and we got our weekly shower out of the way. Three nights we parked at a nearby parking area, which was just off the highway and sometimes noisy trucks pulled in, but overall worked out pretty well. Two nights we parked at Isarabi Park (漁火パーク) on the Karakuwa Peninsula (唐桑), which has tent sites for volunteers and a large restaurant. The sunrise view from Isarabi Park was quite nice.

The March 11 earthquake did some damage to Kesennuma, but compared to the tsunami it was trivial. The tsunami affected coastal areas, obviously, but it also traveled up rivers, so even areas several kilometers from the coast were devastated, if they were near a river and at low elevation. Fortunately, Kesennuma is fairly hilly, compared to, for example, nearby Rikuzen Takata (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rikuzentakata,_Iwate), so many houses were not hit by the tsunami. Elevation matters a lot in determining what places were damaged. The lowest-lying flat areas were totally destroyed -- there is nothing left to clean up, except mud, because mostly everything was washed away. Above that, there are houses that are partly destroyed or in pieces. Some houses that were particularly well built are still in place, but if water reached the second floor, the house is probably not salvageable. Even if water only hit the 1st floor, many houses will be scrapped, depending (I was told) on the building materials used. In the hardest hit areas, nobody will rebuild anything, and in other areas it varies — one house we saw looked repairable, but the residents said that area wasn't considered safe for houses any longer, and regardless, they'd be too scared to move back in there. They had plans to build a new house several kilometers inland, demolish their old house, and use the old location as farmland. The neighboring factory will be rebuilding at its original location, though. For other families, it is unclear what the future will bring. Rural Japan has an aging population, and elderly families whose houses were destroyed will likely find it difficult to rebuild their houses. I suppose many people will be in temporary housing for a long time, some people will build new places, some will leave the area, some will move into apartments (if they can find them, which right now they can't, because all the apartments are full), and some will move into retirement centers. Additionally, many businesses were destroyed, and people who lost both their houses and their jobs will have extra difficulty getting resettled. Even after seeing the devastation in person, it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of everything. One afternoon I took an hour drive south along the coast, and the wreckage continued, village after village, much like it was in Kesennuma. Just how many towns along the coast were damaged like this? I can't imagine it, or maybe just don't want to.

The Kesennuma Disaster Volunteer Center is quite well organized. See the website (http://msv3151.c-bosai.jp/index.php?module=blog&eid=15592&blk_id=12193) or a rough translation of part of it (https://volunteerkesennuma.wordpress.com/). They have a good supply of tools like shovels, wheelbarrows, hoes, rakes, brushes, crowbars, and whatnot. They also have backup gear for people who forget things like rain gear, gloves, masks, or work boots with metal insoles. Volunteers arrive around 9:00, and work groups are formed based on what kind of requests have been made. For example, a house owner might ask for a group of 15 workers to clean up dirt and garbage in their yard. Once formed, the group collects the supplies it needs and buses to the site. Volunteers bring their own water and lunch, and work officially finishes at 3:00. The house owners we met were very energetic, because they were mostly elderly folk who wanted to repair their house but needed help with heavy lifting and tasks that would take a long time (and because people who weren't energetic wouldn't have bothered asking for volunteer cleanup help). Even at the one house we went to with younger people, it was clear that Grandmother was in charge. She told us what to do, and later gave us instant ramen for lunch and ice cream for afternoon snack. Her two sons were her deputies — they gave us the fine details on what to clean and what to leave be. In the late afternoon after we finished, we played with one of the grandchildren for a while until the bus came. He taught us a game where two people each pick a blade of grass, cross them over each other, and pull. The winner is the person whose grass blade doesn't break, and then the entire thing is repeated. The weather was good during Golden Week, so working and playing outside worked out fairly well. I have no idea how long this type of support will be needed, but possibly for quite some time.