Facing the Wave (18 page)

Almost September.

Flooding at Kuwagasaki from the spring tide. Because the ground sank 50 cm, many parts of the area are submerged. And this on a clear day. Imagine what it will be like if the typhoon strikes here.

September 1

Still worried as the typhoon approaches. If any waves come in, no boat will be able to stay in the Miyako port.

We received some saury fish today from the boats that unloaded their catch for the second time since March. Delicious! Virtually all the saury boats from here were washed away.

September 3

Found my ship’s flag hanging from the side of my son’s school building. Thank you to whoever picked it up and saved it. I think I’ll donate it to the school. Grass is growing over our old house site. This town may never be back to what it was.

September 11

My kids and I took a walk from the house to look at Kuwagasaki, our part of town. Nothing has changed. Time has stopped and the wounds of our hearts have not healed. We will be victims for a much longer time. The houses and debris have been cleaned up, but nothing else since then. The ground-works are still left behind. A bridge can be seen still broken in half.

This was the first time to take the kids with me to Kuwagasaki. My daughter used to say she didn’t want to see the broken houses, but today she seemed different. Weeds covering where the buildings used to be. Vegetables and flowers also growing. Tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin … My daughter seemed to enjoy picking the flowers.

Not a soul in sight as we walk around. My son said, “Dad, this town is finished. We have to get out of here.” He took me by surprise. He is still a child, but spoke such serious words. Wondering about the state of his heart shocked me.

Even with people from Miyako—depending upon whether they were affected by the tsunami or not—you can tell there is a difference between us.

We’re supposed to stay in our temporary houses for 2 years, but there are a lot of worries for our future. First, securing our next home. Is it going to be an apartment or rented house, or government housing? I don’t think there will be any openings 2 years from now. Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible. People living in temporary houses in Taro and Yamada have similar fears. If all the people rush into Miyako, there will be no vacancies left. No place to go. Since March, there has been a constant outflow of people leaving the disaster areas. Younger generations seek new opportunities in a new place. Such is reality.

Considering our future, leaving town may not be an option. But if younger people leave, the towns will not develop, and those who are left will have to work hard to amend that loss.

September 14

The sea wind in Sanriku was good today with a fast tide. Twenty-two Celsius in the water. Good thing there is no wind, but instead, a light shower. I tried to trawl with a net to find the tools that got cut off and washed away. They were washed toward land, and it took me 2 hours to find them. Debris had tangled in the rope and it was a mission to get it off. There was
a lot of strain on the lines too. When out fishing, if the line ever gets tied up around you, then you are a dead man, dragged to the bottom of the ocean. Strictly speaking, this is an extremely dangerous job with death on your mind constantly. It wears you down. You just think, “I’m going to die. I’m going to die.” If the line gets caught around your arm, the flesh will be torn off and you’ll be left with the bone sticking out. The oil pressure line wheeler got stuck from the weight of the debris and made a terrible noise. “I don’t want to die” constantly pops into my head during cleanup. Times like these I wish I wasn’t a fisherman.

September 19

It’s much colder today than yesterday. Lowest was 15°C, too cold for short sleeves and sleeping with opened windows. It dropped from 30°C yesterday; today’s highest was 19°C. Rained today with strong winds.

With fall and winter approaching, I worry about the living conditions in the temporary housing. Especially older people living alone. There are many 65+ year old people who have been affected by the disaster. As days go by, they may need aid. There’s a person over 80, and I went to see if he was okay. After the Kobe earthquake, there were stories about lonely deaths inside the temp houses, and I worry that this will happen here. I feel that the bond, the ties and communication between survivors, has grown weaker. It was better when we were living in the evacuation centers. Winter is coming. Living in temporary housing may be very severe for us.

September 21

8:00 p.m. Typhoon coming up the coast. On the boat now. High tide was at 7 p.m. so we came to deal with it. The water is right up at the top of the seawall. Because there aren’t many waves, it hasn’t gone over the wall, but the wind and rain are
getting stronger. I have to protect my boat so I’ll be working through the night. The pressure is getting to my nerves. So worried … If the Hei River increases, the boat will be in severe danger. This is grinding me down. My stomach aches from stress. Have to keep this up until morning.

Seventeen inches of rain have fallen. Here at the coast, there’s no difference between river and field, tree and ocean. Timber from the mountains floats downstream; trees spear oncoming waves. A dark mirror shatters where an egret lands, shadow-first, on water, its feet slamming down, causing light to scatter, spread and dissipate. A sultry stillness hardens.

Masumi, Kazuko, and I drive as far as possible, but have to stop where the water comes in through the doors. We back up and try another route. The whole quake-dropped coast is inundated. Newly planted seedlings are bent down by heavy rainwater, if they can be seen at all. The small channelized river that divided Great-Uncle Satoru’s land from Grandmother’s land has risen over its banks and is now a single body of water that extends to the sea. Water comes up to the open veranda of Great-Uncle’s house. The garden they just planted is gone. Will they survive the shock of losing it all again? Will the government still let them rebuild?

We tromp through shin-deep water. The first floors of damaged houses that had just been repaired are wet and water-stained. Rice fields are holding ponds, tile roofs that had not been fixed have exposed the interiors of standing houses to the typhoon. No one is around. “I’m glad you can see it this way. This is how it looked right after the tsunami,” Masumi says.

I’m looking at fiction; I’m looking at truth; my eyes are wet from the downpour.

Our plan was to drive all the way north to Kamaishi and Miyako today to see Kikuchi-san, “the Swimmer,” then north to visit Hirayama-san and his father. When we call, they all say, please don’t come. You won’t be able to get through. We try anyway. At the least, we could make it to Shichigahama, to the Buddhist temple, Ikoji, but a policeman stops us and tells us to turn around. Did the beautiful new temple, rebuilt by the Akita carpenters, survive? We call but can’t get through.

We pass the white elementary school where Masumi’s aunt and uncle—Kazuyoshi and Kayuko—almost drowned, its first two floors still in ruins. Nearby, a graveyard is in disrepair—all the gravestones toppled. Anything that was reclaimed, replanted, or rebuilt has been undone, and the rainwater is toxic: falling water and falling leaves carry increased amounts of cesium-137. Workers have been struggling in vain to decontaminate soil.

“I grew up around here. There used to be houses, shops, and temples. Now they are gone; I thought they would have been rebuilt by now, but even if they had, they would be covered by water again,” Masumi says. “It feels so strange.”

At the grocery store, Kazuko buys yellow and orange flowers. Tomorrow, September 23, is Ohigan, the autumnal equinox, the day when flowers are put on ancestral graves.

The government is threatening to exterminate animals left behind in the twenty-kilometer zone, even though they can easily be cared for by willing animal rescue groups. TEPCO claims that the power plant withstood the quake, though workers inside the plant claim the opposite is true. Polluted water that had been used to cool the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi continues to leak into the sea.

A Japanese husband and wife have become self-styled animal
rescue guerrillas, defying authorities, evading police roadblocks, and going into the radioactive zone to rescue dogs. Great-Uncle Satoru’s hope darkens, as if hope itself was tenebrific, the cause of night. His flooded winter vegetables will not come into being.

The typhoon veered east of Miyako, sparing the fishing boats of Hirayama and his father. The last of three Hana Fuda cards for September bear the image of a chrysanthemum, but with a full cup of sake.

September

Miyako weather is fine since the early hours. The typhoon avoided us. We were lucky this time. It didn’t hit us. Kamagasaki, the destroyed town near the port, is quiet. The word “rebuilding” gets tossed around, but it’s all talk and nothing has been done. Miyako is the same—comparing the affected and nonaffected areas—the affected areas have been left behind in time. But that’s the reality. Going home now. Ocean too rough. Father and I will make buoys today.

* * *

I tell Kazuko about the dessert my mother always made at Christmas called Floating Island—a dab of meringue floating on a sea of custard.

Fukushima Daiichi is another kind of island, a radioactive wound surrounded by ghost towns—places that have been evacuated and may never be inhabited again. The nuclear power plant continues to be a hotspot and what has been called “a fortress of sacrifice and duty.”

When TEPCO called for volunteers to come and work there, offers rolled in—too many of them. Men in their fifties called first, including a fifty-nine-year-old a few months from retirement. They were trying to take up the jobs in order to spare younger men from being exposed to serious amounts of contamination.

The Fukushima 50 have been compared to the 47 Ronin (lord-less, wandering samurai in feudal Japan), their work at Daiichi feeding on the spirit of Bushido, the warrior’s way, where loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor are upheld. They are also the “new
hibakusha
,” and will be held at arm’s length by others, much as the 1945 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were. Young men will not be able to marry, for fear that they will become sick and unable to provide for a family. Older men will be on the lookout for cancer to carry them away soon.

Masao Yoshida, the fifty-six-year-old Daiichi manager who ignored TEPCO’s on-and-off-again order to stop pumping seawater into a reactor and by doing so saved many lives, was hospitalized
on November 24. He’d worked for nine months to bring Daiichi under control and was the leader of the Fukushima 50. He’s been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

Just before I leave for the airport, we spend an hour at the graveyard where Kazuko’s ancestors are buried. Rain comes in fits and starts. Incense is lit. Clumps of bamboo encircle us, their hollow trunks knocking out a spare song. Wind pushes the wet remnants of the typhoon eastward. The sky goes dark, then bright. It’s autumn. Wind sweeps it. Clouds crumble. Leaf is nothing.

It is dark when I wake, and dark by midafternoon. Today, December 8, is Rohatsu, the day the Buddha attained nirvana. When I ask American friends who are monks what they will do this day, one says, “We will sit in meditation.” Another says, “We will cook feast food.” A third says: “I can’t remember. Anyway, we practice meditation because we
are
enlightened; we don’t practice to
become
enlightened.”

Driving to the airport from home to catch a flight to Tokyo, the BBC World News is on, and a professor mentions the Shinto creation myth: “Brother and Sister had sex and gave birth to islands. Then they got lonely and gave birth again. From the left eye came the Sun goddess, and from the right, the god of the Moon.”