Catherine Watkins '98
(The Internationalist Winter 2011/2012 Vol. 48)
"Whenever I would speak Japanese, I would get a look of surprise from those nearby...I would explain that I went to this really neat international school in Tokyo and received an almost bilingual education."
I was working out at the gym the morning of March 11, 2011, in Chicago, when the Tohoku earthquake struck. As people gathered around the TVs to watch as the horrors from the earthquake and tsunami unfolded, I knew I had to get to Japan, though I did not know when, where or how. Having lived there for a handful of years, including several with my family (during which time I attended Nishimachi), I have a deep affection for the country and its people. I truly wanted to be on the ground to help in as direct a way as possible.
As a result, I was privileged to spend most of summer 2011 in Ofunato, a city of about 40,000 in Iwate Prefecture on the northeast coast of Japan, as a site leader and translator with All Hands Volunteers, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to disaster relief, who were established in Ofunato on a long-term basis.
By way of background, I work as a hospital chaplain here in the States. I help people put their lives back together spiritually and emotionally. I headed to Tohoku last June, three months after the quake, with a plan to help people put their lives back together physically. It was not long after I arrived, however, that I realized how much emotional work I would do as well. While the physical work of the volunteers was incredible in and of itself, it was the awe-inspiring, humbling, and absolutely sacred conversations I had with locals that made me truly understand my call to Tohoku.
While the nuclear disaster has overwhelmingly stolen the media's attention (particularly in the U.S.), many people are, as a consequence, less familiar with the physical destruction in the Tohoku region, the scale of which it is impossible to comprehend. Over 100,000 homes and buildings were destroyed or damaged beyond repair, and hundreds of thousands of individuals were left without access to food, water, fuel, and electricity. Words, and even photographs, cannot express the magnitude of the devastation. Imagine standing in the middle of a neighborhood, turning around 360 degrees, and as far as you can see in every direction, total obliteration. Cars stuck in trees and perched on rooftops, boats resting on the remnants of building foundations, homes splintered like toothpicks, toys and household items littered in the streets. On the roadways, lane lines became obsolete—you just drove the best you could through paths in the debris. In the field, I was able to help with gutting and cleaning homes and businesses, clearing debris from rice fields, parks, and streets, clearing mud and debris from canals and sewers, removing bacteria- and mold-ridden mud from foundations, separating decaying fish from its packaging at an abandoned fish factory, rehabbing homes for the coming winter, and hand-cleaning water-damaged family photographs. It was wonderful to be in Ofunato for such a long period of time, as I was able to watch the transformation of parts of the city: piles of debris sorted and/or cleared, homes with walls and floors again, streets which no longer flooded, and parks in which kids could once again play. The volunteers with All Hands lived in a community center, which really allowed me to share in the lives of the locals. I found it was our spontaneous moments of communion that came to be my favorite parts of the day. On one occasion, while we were tearing down the water-damaged and mold-ridden walls in local home, the owner, Sanno-san, brought in some small onions and tomatoes. As we watched, she cut them up and made them into a little salad and presented them for us to eat, so proud of the fact that she was able to cultivate the very earth that had betrayed her and her country just months earlier. And as we ate, she shared memories of her family, her past, and what had changed after the tsunami. A bit later we returned her butsudan* (which had been toppled by the tsunami) to its proper place, and Sanno-san then asked me to help her clean it. As we cleaned each item, she told me the stories that went with each one. Together we re-assembled her sacred space.
On the highway project, we shoveled truckloads of mud out of drainage troughs (gesuido) along the sides of major roadways – having to move the heavy cement blocks which covered the ditches all along the way. Working on the highway crew was exhausting and filthy; it was also humbling. Everyone who drove by knew who we were and what we were doing. Drivers were constantly stopping to talk or bring us drinks, snacks, or sweets. One day, while shoveling mud in the pouring rain, I watched an old man with two heavy bags walk precariously down a long set of uneven steps from his house on the hillside to the street. It took him almost a half-hour. As I worked, I watched him lay out sheets of newspaper under a carport and slowly, and meticulously, set up what looked to be a feast of bottled drinks and snacks on upside-down milk crates. Soon he came walking towards us. As the designated translator, I approached him. He invited us over to his break area and said that he had been waiting weeks for us to make it to his portion of the road so that he would have the good fortune to be able to do something for us. The pride that he took in serving us made me even more proud to be serving him.
During the Obon holiday, in August, our volunteer group was invited to partake in festival celebrations throughout the area. Most were filled with fireworks, dancing, and lots of eating. Before each one started, some local housewives would come over to our base and dress the women in yukata. On the last night of Obon, we were asked to be a part of the village's toro-nagashi, a ritual of remembrance, honoring those who have gone before us. We helped individuals and families construct lanterns of wood and paper and then watched as Buddhist priests (flanked by 323 named candles, one for each of the 323 residents of Ofunato who died on March 11) consecrated the lanterns and wrote the names of the deceased in classical calligraphy. As the sun set, the lanterns were lit, and the first ones placed in a stream. I spent the next hour, squatting at the edge of the water, watching as over 1,000 lanterns floated by, redirecting those that got stuck, and reading every name I could. Some deaths dated back decades or more, some only weeks.
Whenever I would speak Japanese, whether on site or in town on my own time, I would get a look of surprise from those nearby. This was usually followed by the question, "How come you speak such good Japanese?" I would explain that I had lived in Japan when I was younger and that I went to this really neat international school in Tokyo and received an almost bilingual education. Of all of the skills that I brought with me to Tohoku, the most essential was my Japanese, which I first started learning in Kamiki-sensei's classroom. Though I had no way of knowing it back then, the experiences I had, and the education I received at NIS, equipped me well for this past summer. In addition to my language skills, I had also developed an understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese culture and customs—I often found fellow volunteers turning to me to ask how to act or what to do next. My ability to say the Japanese words, coupled with an understanding of how to effectively communicate the meaning behind those words, set me even farther apart from other foreign speakers of Japanese. I found the locals were able to accept, and even open up to, me, which was what allowed me to provide emotional and spiritual support.
On another day, just as I was finishing up work on a house (I was on my own that day), the homeowner, an elderly woman named Yamaguchi-san, brought me a cake, still warm from the oven. I tasted it and asked what it was. She called it "ganzugi" and explained it was a local sweet, unique to that area. She knew I had lived in Japan for a while and wanted to give me something I had never tried before. This was her grandmother's recipe, she said; it had been passed down through the family. Over several days of conversation, while I had been removing damaged floorboards and de-mudding the foundation of her house, we had shared parts of ourselves with one another. After I finished the work on her home, she sent me on my way with a piece of her legacy, in a cake that had been made for generations in her family. I felt I had left behind a legacy for her as well: the work I did on her house. And the ganzugi was delicious.
* a family Buddhist altar