Helping Hands in Rikuzentakata

This post will be inadequate...

My friend Clint and I were able to go and do some volunteer work up in northern Japan where the devastating tsunami struck last year. We went to the ex-town of Rikuzentakata in the Iwate prefecture. Pictures will not do justice, but Google this town's name and you can see and read about the horrific events that took place over a year ago and what these poor people have endured over the last 14 months, and how long they still have to go...

We flew to Tokyo on Friday, and boarded a bus with about 30 other Japanese Mormons, mostly from the Tokyo area, in a volunteer group called Helping Hands. (You can check out the website at www.helpinghands.jp, there's an English button). We left Tokyo about 10:00 PM and traveled through the night arriving at Rikuzentakata about 8:00 Saturday morning.

Here's a couple of pictures taken driving through where Rikuzentakata used to be. Once it was a town of about 24,000 people. The waves that hit them reached 36' in height just minutes after the 9.0 earthquake struck. Some people evacuated the the 4th floor, and were still in water up to their chests. About 10% of the population is dead or missing, and most of all of the buildings were washed away out to sea. There was a grove of 60,000 trees along the coast. All but one were destroyed. Make sure you read about the Tree of Hope if you Google this place.

The man I'm standing next to is Ken. Well that's not his full name, but I kept forgetting how to say his real name so I asked him if I could just call him Ken-san. Obviously there was a bit of a language barrier, but he spoke a little English and I spoke a little Japanese... He's a farmer, makes a living by selling his produce at a market, and has probably done that every day for a very long time up until last year. The farmland is now useless because of the salt water, and I've read it will take several years to be suitable for growing again.

 Ken-san and Mrs. Ken-san and some of the volunteers.

This is a panoramic view I tried to take. Ken-san's house was one of the few that actually survived, as it was a little higher up. It's the red roof house on the right hand side. He said there used to be about 30 houses in this little area. There is one lone house standing you can see towards the left-center. Ken-san just shrugged his shoulders and said "We don't know..." It was probably completely under water.

 

We helped Ken-san try and clear out his orchard of apple and plum trees, and green tea bushes that were so overgrown you couldn't even tell they were there. Luckily they were far enough up on the hill that the salt water didn't kill them. But all of his farmland below was destroyed.

 

Here's our group taking a break and enjoying some homemade mochi (gooey rice ball is how I can describe it) from Mrs. Ken-san. We worked all day on Saturday, spent the night in a nearby town, and headed back to Tokyo on Sunday. I had to leave that place with mixed emotions. I was very happy to go and help. But at the same time felt very depressed and useless against the almost insurmountable mountain of work that is left to do, and the almost inperceptible amount of work that our small group did. As we waved goodbye to Ken-san and his wife as we departed, he was smiling and bowing and waving, and I hoped at the very least that us being there helped them feel that they had not been forgotten.