This post was written by Catherine Danley, a first-year ALT in Imizu-shi, Toyama who volunteered in the Tohoku region in September. Read more of her writing at her blog.

A pile of wood and debris next to a leveled home

In September, during a three day weekend part of “Silver Week,” I traveled to the Tohoku area with 80 other volunteer members of my church, Mormon Helping Hands. We left Toyama on Thursday night at 9:30 on a bus bound for Iwate, and we arrived at a ryokan at 7:30 the next morning. We had to stay at a ryokan two hours away from the main volunteer center because it was the one of the closest places that could accommodate people. After a quick combini breakfast, we continued to the Iwate area by bus.

When we finally arrived to our area, I couldn’t believe what I saw. I was expecting damaged houses, rice fields, and more. But what I saw was nothing. What had been the port town of Rikuzentakata, Iwate was now fields of wild grass, piles of rubble and debris, and acres of smashed cars. The tsunami had leveled almost every building. As our bus driver took us to our service project, he kept saying things like, “That used to be a neighborhood.” Now it’s a field of concrete, and you can see the outlines of houses and roads. Or, “that used to be the downtown port.” Now there’s only one building left and the doors and windows are gone. I only saw one house there, and it was leveled. One sight that really impressed me though was an area that used to be a forest. There’s still one tree standing there. In an area where everything was torn down, ripped out and scattered, one living tree is an inspiring sight.

The lone tree on the coast

We spent most of Friday and Saturday cutting down wild grass in the fields and removing objects from mud. Bamboo grass had taken over the whole area and farmers needed it cut down so they could burn the fields in the fall and plant rice in the spring. Luckily, about 80 of us from the Kanazawa and Toyama area, and another 30 people from Tokyo, were working together to clear as much as we could. With our combined efforts, we cleared several fields. But the difficulty in cleaning up a field isn’t hacking away at grass with a scythe in a muddy rice paddie – the hard part is finding all of the objects the tsunami’s wrath had forced deep into the fields.

I pulled out objects such as bent sheet metal, plastic and parts of car engines. But what pulled at my heartstrings most was pulling out muddy kimonos, lids to cookie jars, broken CDs and suitcases. It’s these objects that are so human, and that have been broken and scattered, that constantly reminded me of how the people in this town had been killed, broken and scattered by this earthquake and tsunami. I found out later that there was an old man who kept passing by our group working in the fields, and he kept bowing to us and thanking us. It turns out he’s the owner of the land we cleared, and it’s all he has left.

On our way back to Toyama, we stopped at a shop in Iwate that had some omiyage and books devoted to the disaster in Tohoku. Throughout this experience, I had been a little emotional, but I nearly cried when seeing one picture in particular. It was of an old man kneeling in the middle of the damage. He held a couple of flowers in his hands as he sobbed. I couldn’t read the text, but when someone explained to me the man in the photo had lost his wife, I started to cry.

Men and women would stand along the road waving and shouting thank you.

I know many of us have heard this a lot, but it really is amazing to me how well the Japanese have handled this disaster, and how strong they are as a people. So many Japanese told me thank you “for helping us” whether I was in Toyama or Iwate. They saw the disaster as one that hurt all of the Japanese, even if their area was unaffected by it. The Japanese are the most humble, patient, and loving people I have ever met. I can’t tell you how often I have asked for help at the supermarket or on the street, and I will suddenly have eight people around me doing everything they can to help me or understand me. Even on this trip, if I didn’t understand something, it was only a matter of time before someone grabbed me and pulled me along to the next location, or tried to translate for me. Their example of kindness, hospitality, and strength is one we should all try to emulate.

Mormon Helping Hands - all of the volunteers from Toyama and Kanazawa