Ishinomaki and More - 6/15, 16, 17

The days are starting to blur.  Here's a quick summary and a few photos.

Wednesday 6/15 - Our team made 2 small teams today.  Sylvia and David went with Gilberts to help a missionary from Osaka, Chad Huddleston.  He and his team of volunteers have been working here since just days after the disaster and they are making good connections in the Watanoha area of Ishinomaki.  His team was renovating a house, then hosting a supper BBQ to give away fresh, hot food to neighbors whose morale was lifted before our eyes.  

The sign says "Welcome to Onagawa".

Meanwhile, Mike & I did video work in Shichigahama, Ishinomaki, and Onagawa. Mike videoed the devastated beach communities in Shichigahama, then we drove to Watanoha and got shots of Sylvia, David, the Gilberts, and Chad & team doing the house renovation.  At 1:00 PM we taped an interview with Rob Lehne, an English teacher in the Onagawa public schools who rescued school-children during the tsunami, and showed us some stunning photos of the area from the day afterwards (see below). 

Rob's friend took this photo during the tsunami in Onagawa.

Rob's photo of the same valley a day or two later.

Rob's photo of the main Onagawa valley days after the tsunami - comparing this to ours is really stunning. 

Next, we drove back to Ishinomaki to tape an interview with our new friends, Mr & Mrs Saito, who told about his seafood transportation business being destroyed and how she nearly drowned but her leg was miraculously freed and she escaped.

We all joined together to serve at the BBQ and enjoyed connecting with the survivors of the disaster, and sharing life with them.

BBQ for the neighborhood

Kiwako-san lived 54 years in this house; she worked daily to clean up.

Thursday 6/16 - Mike's time here ends today, so Sylvia and I went with him on the train to Sendai station, and helped him get on the 10 AM bullet-train to Tokyo, where he made connections for another train to Narita airport and his flight back to Seattle.  All went well, and crossing the dateline, he arrived home about the same time he was boarding the bullet-train here.  Wild, huh?

Mike on the Bullet-train ready to depart Sendai for Tokyo.

Sylvia and I had arranged to meet up with Mika and Hidemasa, and enjoyed a good talk and delicious lunch in Sendai.  We got back to the Guest House mid-afternoon and hooked up with David who had chosen to stay to do a prayer walk and help local teams do beach clean-up. We took the rest of day for catching up on bookkeeping, laundry, etc.

Oishii desu ne!

Friday 6/17 - In the morning, we met Amy Newsome and her 14 member international team from Nagoya, Japan, to pow-wow about English classes. She is part of the partnership with TouchGlobal, and will be doing some English language outreach next week after we leave.  David had prepared and brought some English materials for our team because of the possibly that we would do the English outreach.  But schedules readjusted, so Amy is going to start the classes, and the plan is for successive teams to continue.  

David shows the English materials to T.G. Lewis and Amy

In the afternoon, we worked with Amy and her team who are also partnering with Samaritan's Purse to clean houses in the Koganehama neighborhood of Ishinomaki.  Because the tsunami completely flooded the first floor of all these houses, all interior walls and floors have to be removed, and the crawl space cleaned, then everything is bleached.  Once that much is done, foam is placed in the floor ready for carpenters to replace the floor and walls. The owner of one of these houses told us that in this small neighborhood alone 58 people died.  How sad.

David removing wall board in the "tokonoma" area of a house.

Sylvia doing sweep up work.

Mark, David, and Sylvia shoveling debris from the crawl space.

At a nearly completed clean-up, Steven of Samaritan's Purse chats with Sylvia (behind the doorpost), David, and Amy.

A group blessing-prayer for the house owner, Tanaka-san, the man on the far right in light-tan pants.

BTW, the masks we wear are because of dust and asbestos problems, but also because of the smell: a horrible combination of rotting fish, sewage, and the stench of death.  We were told that another human body was found earlier in the morning just around the corner by crews cleaning out the piles of debris.

We have some deep discussions on our drives back and forth, and some very welcome showers once we return to the Guest House.

Ishinomaki & Onagawa - 6/13 & 14

Thought maybe a photo essay would be helpful this time...

David, Mike, & Sylvia learn the layout of Ishinomaki from Masahiro Takata,  co-leader of the Ishinomaki outreach.

Onagawa clean up - the two cars are gone from the roofs.

Mike and Sylvia chatting with Masami who lost his parents in the tsunami.

Mark & Sylvia, Hiro & Masami, Mike, and Andy & Lorna Gilbert (leaders of Ishinomaki outreach).

Memorial flowers at Onagawa

Masahiro explaining about English classes at the school.

Meeting Aoyama Sensei, the English Department head for Onagawa schools.

Aoyama Sensei showing the new temporary library for the kids who survived the disaster.

Sylvia, Andy, and Mike with an Army captain at the relief supplies area in Onagawa.  His white and red patch was an exchange with a US Army soldier on "Operation Tomodachi".

"Hang in there, Onagawa!" in the Tohoku dialect on a bumper sticker.

Surveying a possible building to renovate for a community center.  It used to be a dentist office.

Mr & Mrs Saito in front of their home in Ishinomaki - the downstairs is completely ruined, so they will have to tear the whole thing down.  He is a brother to Sylvia's friend, Shizuko Sensei.

Sylvia translates to David as Mrs Saito tells how she was at home when the tsunami hit, and her foot got trapped as the water was rising.  She was completely underwater when somehow her foot was freed and she climbed up to the 2nd floor and safety. 

The Saito's neighborhood in Ishinomaki.  They pointed out 3 homes on all sides of them where occupants died.

In front of Mr Saito's seafood transportation business.  This location is 100 meters from the shoreline, and he lost 20+ of his 47 delivery trucks, but all his employees are safe.

Standing on the beach embankment where the tsunami came from - the ocean is just yard behind the camera.

Mike surveys the neighborhood.  Ironically, the sign has instructions of where to go in case of a tsunami.

Saito-san's office and transportation yard.  The high-water mark is one foot below the upper joint of the post on the left,  just above the top of this warehouse opening.

The Saitos treated us to some of the best sushi in Japan.

Yummm!

 

Tokyo-Chiba-Sendai 6/10-12: Sylvia's Update

Hi from Sylvia. Mark asked if I'd like to blog this time, so here goes.

Friday night 6/10, we went to downtown Sapporo to see the Yosakoi out-door dance competition. This amazing dance phenomena is like a half-time show in a football game in the US, but the music style is a fusion of traditional Japanese folk dance with modern hip-hop, and done by teams of about 50 - 100 young adults dressed in traditional Japanese clothes. 

Mark, Mike and I flew from Hokkaido back to Tokyo around noon Saturday 6/11 and met up with our 4th team member, David Wyatt, who flew from Seattle to Narita. Then we met up with 2 leaders from the TouchGlobal / PC-USA disaster relief team partnership that we'll be working with this next week. We drove 30 minutes from Narita to a Very, Very Old, Mildewy small Japanese house that appears to have been empty (un-lived-in) for a long time in the middle of nowhere's-ville Chiba just for overnight. I was worried (unnecessarily) cockroaches would be scurrying over us…

Today, Sunday 6/12, we drove 6 hours up to the Sendai area, and have arrived at the Takayama Guest House in the Shichigahama area. It's been 3 months since the disaster, and it's so appalling. Mark says much of this area looks cleaned up, but it sure looks to me that LOTS of work has to be done. This evening we'll meet up with the Gilberts, the missionary family who is moving into the Ishinomaki area and our primary contact family here. 

Really looking forward to getting started on our relief and recovery work tomorrow!