Facing the Wave (14 page)

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Some interior scenes from sleep are too dark to bring into the morning; others ooze out. I’d imagined the devastated coast would be black, but in June, it’s dusty; I thought radioactive dust would be red, but it’s gray; that hell would be falling ash and hot rocks, but it’s moist air and crushed houses. I thought whole forests of bodies would roll onto the beach like cut trees, but they hide, submerged inside waves.

When I was young in California, a mudslide swept neighbors from their bedrooms, and horses from their watering holes. It roared down the
barranca
a few feet from our house. I remember mud, boulders, trees, and water coming down the mountain, and my father’s urgent calls to get us up on the hill; how we ran fast with that roar in our ears. A friend’s red MG was carried five miles down to Miramar Beach and landed on the sand, upright, the windshield wipers still going. Waves were full of rubbish; whole trees rolled back and forth, their roots still connected; I thought they should be carried back to the mountains and replanted. After, all that was left was a Christmas tree in the creek bed with strings of lights dragging, and my dentist and his wife hanging onto a tree.

Here, in Sendai, I sleep naked on a futon with no blankets, no sheets. My homesickness is a turn of mind that journalists rarely mention but is, I suspect, a constant plague. Before dawn, and its seductive sounds of breakfast preparation, I plot my escape: the bus to Sendai station, the Shinkansen to Tokyo station, the train to Narita, and a plane going home.

I write to my lover, a former war correspondent, and ask him if I’ve been so thoroughly radiated here by nuclear fallout that I’ve gravely endangered my health and our happiness together. Have I acted rashly for no reason? Is it another kind of betrayal to stay? Is it a betrayal to all those who suffered here to leave?

Twenty-three years ago in northeastern Japan, my friend Leila and I spent weeks talking to
itako
—blind mediums who communicate with the dead. Rubbing a long rosary, an
irataka-juzu
with its three hundred black soapberry beads interspersed with bear claws and teeth, one
itako
went into a trance and told me things she couldn’t have known about my dead friend. After, we climbed the northeastern mountain of Osorezan to see where the
itako
go to speak to the dead in the summer. It was midwinter and the snow was knee-high. The Shinto-Buddhist cosmology of the dead is described as a hot hell with dry riverbeds full of dead children, ponds of blood, hills of swords, a beach of paradise, and a red bridge that connects heaven and hell, the living with the dead.

Now ghosts float all over the Sanriku coast and I wonder if a path is being worn straight through to that peak. Sunlight filters through
shoji
and day comes on. Debris piles unravel, but no one can remember how to remake what was here, how a whole society of interlacing families, friends, obligations, and habits is made; what a bicycle looks like, or a bed, or a door.

Lying half on, half off the futon, my heels rub the grain of the tatami. Once it was grass waving in the breeze; now it is cut, tied, squeezed, bound, and dead. I lift up, and as I do so, the cupboard doors begin to shake: for a few minutes a violent tremor holds us.
What kind of embrace is this?
A second later, rain explodes as if passing clouds had been punctured; gray cloud-heads tumble down, concussing the ground. The back of my hand lands on the
o-bento
—a box lunch brought from the train.

A day is a box in which earthquakes occur.

Midday, and a man in his sixties who is crying walks down the hill from a small shrine dabbing his eyes. He crosses over flattened houses, picks his way through debris, skirts the blue bins where harvested seaweed was washed, and steps over a battered surfboard, a halved bicycle. Beyond, the beach and the ocean. A few battered skiffs have washed up on shore. He walks and doesn’t see.

He approaches. Even three months after the disaster, people still need someone to listen. He tells me how once the houses stood close together with a narrow, flower-strewn path between, how sounds of the
shakuhachi
haunted moon-viewing nights. Garden plots had onions, cabbage, and daikon that shook green into the air. In winter, farmers sang
jinku
—old-fashioned songs. No one was rich but fish, fresh water, flowers, fruit, and food were abundant. And there was no Wave.

Now the tide keeps washing nothingness onto shore. Nothingness and dead bodies. Not long after the tsunami, the Dalai Lama came to visit Japan. The monks accompanying him recited the Heart Sutra 100,000 times, and he talked about the union of emptiness and bliss. But this old farmer says he keeps seeing things as they
were
, not as they are now, and doesn’t know how to stop the ghostly procession. He wonders if he’s been dreaming. He looks, but there is no focus. He can’t tame his mind to what is before him.

Instead, he sees the thronging population of this town and the very places where rogue waves came bearing ships, mud, and
trees. He sees arms flailing and heads going under in swirling seas thick with broken boats and clothes. He hears a baseball game get swallowed up by the earthquake’s shuddering. He sees where his own house once stood, and how his children ran home from school, calling for the dog, calling for something to eat. He wonders what his wife would be cooking for dinner now if she were alive.

The old man squats down on wet pavement. Already water is coming up around his rubber boots. He pushes the white mask back up on his head and dips a finger into the tide’s foam, as if what he’s lost might bump by. He carried the bodies of his family in a wheelbarrow to the back door of the crematorium. It too was partly damaged by the tsunami, so they could cremate only one body at a time. The ashes of this whole town’s dead coat the water. His daughter. Her child. His devoted wife. His mother.

June 30

Thinking back to March: I took my boat out. When I came back in, my house was gone. There were no people. Was anyone alive? I saw smoke. There were fires—out on the water and in what was once our town. But still, no one. The last big tsunami like this was in the Edo period. I never thought this would happen in my lifetime. Today, three months later, we moved into temporary housing. There is no air. The windows don’t open. The instructions say we have to have the air ducts open all the time or we’ll die from oxygen starvation. So, we survived the tsunami, but they can’t make a house that is safe for us to live in now.

August 3

Came home from fishing and the temp house is hot!! Even with the windows and doors open. If the heat gets any worse living in this prefab is going to be tough. It’s very different from a normal house. We have to live the best way we can. There are ants inside, and things don’t work. Every temp house has its own set of problems.

August 5

Today Sanriku Bay was foggy and hard to see through. Heavy southern winds were blowing and the sea was rough. With the quick waves the boat catches more underwater debris
than before and gets caught on it more often than we did right after the tsunami. Why now, I wonder? It’s bizarre. If we get caught now, what’s going to happen when they start trawling?

August 6

My son’s school has open pool classes during the summer holiday. The gym next to it, called the Sea Arena, is still an evacuation center, but it will close on the 10th. People must move into their temporary housing by then. It’s a little sad to be separated from all the victims from our town. Volunteers won’t be able to visit people and help out anymore, or send donation goods to evac points either. Now it’s the job of the volunteer organizations to pass the goods forward. Thank you so much to everybody who has helped us.

The city is deciding whether or not to clear away the broken houses and refuse left behind. I really encourage people to see the disasters for themselves. It’s sad, but please come to see it and remember the sight. You may not be able to accept it, but there is a huge difference between witnessing and not witnessing with your own eyes.

August 10

Out on the waves today. The ice factory at Denzaki Wharf has been completed and is running again. The Bonito and Tuna Fishing Associations have requested the Miyako fish market to receive their catch. There are only limited places where there is ice available, since the ice factories were destroyed too. If boats can load up on ice here, more boats will arrive and it will bring back some liveliness to the place.

Came home after work and IT IS SO HOT. 33 degrees C. outside. Inside the house is like a sauna. We have the windows and doors open but there is no breeze. Oh man …

August 11

Five months since that day. It seems that time has stopped inside me since then. Parts of me cannot accept reality, some things I don’t want to admit yet, and there are some struggles in my heart.

Looking down at Kuwagasaki Bay from the big bridge above Octopus Bay makes me sad. March 11 was when everything changed. Some people had their lives destroyed; some have no hopes or dreams, only despair; some lost their family, home, and jobs. As days go by, you can tell the difference between those who were victims of the tsunami and those who weren’t.

Everybody moved into temporary housing today. The evac center where we all lived as a group is now closed. There are still many problems and issues to deal with, and the reality of the world to face from now on.

I’ve brought my son to the bridge. It’s almost 2:46 p.m. That’s when the earthquake happened. The waves came at 3:24. It’s been five months. The wounds in my heart have yet to heal. I wonder if there will be a siren. A moment of silence.

August 14

I couldn’t hear with my left ear and my head started hurting, my face swelling. Went to the hospital for a CT scan. My brain had a swelling. Went home with some medications.

August 18

Another CT scan and the swelling is gone. It seems that all the fatigue and stress caused my brain to be affected by a virus. Not serious. Relieved.

August 24

Our temporary housing unit received clothing from World Vision Japan. Thank you!

August 26

Back to work. Will go out to sea tomorrow.

August 29

Lots of flying fish jumping out of the water. Finished the day’s catch and unloaded at the market. Great!

Worried about typhoons, the low air pressure and the waves. It could easily go over the walls and send the boat crashing into the concrete. Might have to sleep over on the boat. So worried.

Five thousand, two hundred tons of stone from the town of Namie were quarried and used to build condominiums for refugees from the no/go zone. The stone is all radioactive and has to be removed.

The latest analysis shows that xenon-133 began to vent from the nuclear plant just after the earthquake, but before the tsunami, though TEPCO still claims the plant was “earthquake safe.”

Back home, an earthquake rattled the coast near my rented island house. The nuclear power plant nearby may have been damaged. A few days later, I hear that my house lies in the direct path of an approaching hurricane. The island is evacuated and for a week, I’m not sure if I’ve joined the ranks of the homeless. The newspapers say that if the earthquake and hurricane had occurred on the same day, another Fukushima-type disaster might have happened. “You might as well move to Japan!” Masumi tells me.

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Masumi’s grandmother: “I don’t know where I am. I miss my house. Why am I here? When am I going home?”

As if not beautiful enough, the wrinkled ocean smooths its own skin. Wave follows wave. It’s been six months since the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown, and everywhere in Japan there are ceremonies commemorating the dead.

At 2:46 p.m. a moment of silence is observed. Buddhist monks chant the Heart Sutra and the parents of dead children fly paper cranes. In the town of Higashi-Matsushima thousands of candles are lit. In Ishinomaki and Otsuchi white paper lanterns with flickering candles are sent afloat on rivers. In what was Rikuzentakata, a town that vanished in twelve minutes, a memorial service for the city’s dead is held in its one remaining hillside temple. After, a bonfire is lit. The blaze is encircled by cut cedar boughs and bamboo poles hung with
gohei
—sacred white papers cut in zigzag shapes (not unlike images of lightning) that represent the presence of the
kamisama
. Divinity resides everywhere.