We were traveling last week, first to Tokyo for a few days to meet up with some of our contacts, then to Iwate to visit Ofunato and Kamaishi as a family. Since I had my phone with me, I would check Facebook or Google News whenever we had a minute to spare, and the posts constantly reminded me that it was Thanksgiving weekend. A tinge of homesickness hit me: thoughts of queuing up the Christmas songs on iTunes; cooking with Soo, preparing for my parents and brother to come over for a big family dinner; setting up the Christmas tree with the boys… This is my favorite time of the year, and I eagerly await the holiday season each year.
Then I read the headlines– a woman using pepper spray at Walmart to get other shoppers out of the way so that she could get cheap electronics; a police officer leg-sweeping an old man to the ground, knocking him unconscious in the videogame aisle of a different Walmart as he was trying to keep his grandson from being trampled; a shopper leaving a store (surprisingly, not Walmart) with a bag of items and being shot to death by a robber who wanted them. It was Black Friday in the States. I quickly snapped out of waxing nostalgic and was relieved to be in the Japanese countryside, where there are no Walmarts to brawl in.
As we’d go on to meet evacuees in temporary shelters, we’d hear stories of pain and loss that occurred in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which struck just before 3 o’clock in the afternoon on March 11, 2011.
It was a Friday.
Ofunato
After a brief stop in Hanamaki, where it was snowing, we took a train to Tono and connected with a small team of volunteers from Hong Kong and Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan. Together, we went to the city of Ofunato to hand out winter clothes at the temporary shelters. (It’s anticipated that during the upcoming winter, heavy snow could shut down the roads, rendering many coastal towns inaccessible by car, so all winter supplies will have to be delivered now.)
Our first stop was a shelter that our team gained access to last month thanks to Sasaki-san. Due to its remote location, this shelter gets fewer visits from volunteer teams than other shelters in other towns; Sasaki-san even told us as much when he took us there last month. It was great to see that our team leaders have already begun building relationships with the people at this shelter, as it was only 6 weeks ago that connections were made. We split up and started knocking on doors to deliver bags of winter clothes (along with photographs that were taken the last time they visited here) and invite them to a foot washing service in the community center, which was basically a large trailer at the shelter. (More on this below.)
We followed a Japanese volunteer named Naomi to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Takita, who delighted in Matthew and Johann. Mrs. Takita told Naomi that seeing children gave her hope– most of the residents of these shelters tend to be senior citizens– and invited us inside, where she gave the kids some oranges, cookies, and other goodies.
As the four of us sat there with Naomi, Takita-san served us tea, took a seat, and quietly began to sew. It was awkward at first, since no one was really saying anything and our kids were making themselves at home, eating all her snacks and watching TV, but it occurred to me that perhaps she felt comfortable this way, having a family at her feet while she did grandmotherly things. (She even offered to be our boys’ nihon no obaasan, or “Japanese Grandmother.”)
Takita-san had an altar in her home, and on top of it was a very old photograph. She told us that this was a picture of her grandmother, who lost her parents, grandparents, and siblings in a tsunami that devastated Ofunato in 1896. Orphaned and alone at the age of 7, she grew up through difficulty, married, and had two children, a daughter (Takita-san’s mother) and a son, who was later killed in the second Sino-Japanese war. With no male heirs to pass along all documents and artifacts relating to ancestry, Takita’s mother took the role and later passed the baton to Takita-san. Takita-san guarded these documents and items carefully for decades– until the tsunami of March 11 washed them all away. The photograph of her grandmother was the only item that survived.
Outside of the Takita home is a yard decoration of a large owl, which was swept away by the tsunami but later recovered and found to be undamaged. It stands proudly at the doorway as a monument to resilience in the midst of hardship.
We passed out winter clothes and photographs to several more households. Along the way, Sato-san (the woman in the blue jacket who welcomed us back in October) came out to give Matthew a bag of popcorn. It was good to see her again, and I hope to connect with her when we return to Ofunato.
Naomi later told us about a young woman and her baby, whom she met at a different shelter in Ofunato the day before. This woman lost her husband to the tsunami and gave birth to their child the very next day, on March 12th. Twenty-six years old, she’s a single mother raising a baby in a temporary shelter, and the harsh Tohoku winter is coming up soon…
Please keep these people in your prayers.
Kamaishi
We began Sunday morning with a time of worship, prayer, and a devotional reading from the Book of Ezra with the rest of our team, in the living room of our hosts’ rental home in Tono. It was a far cry from the Sunday services I’m used to, where flashing lights, video screens, and a full band are the norm. Here, the worship lyrics were written out on paper in romaji, or Romanized Japanese, and taped to a clothesline, yet the experience was no less powerful– if anything, we felt more of a heart of worship because we had no fancy toys to fall back on.
Among the 10 members of our team, some were Japanese, some were from Hong Kong, Soo is from Korea, and I’m Chinese-Indonesian-American. It was yet another glimpse of the landscape of God’s Kingdom, with people of every tongue, tribe, and nation gathered in the name of Jesus to worship Him. (Some of the people whom we encountered at the shelters later mentioned what an impression it made on them that foreigners would come and do our best to serve them, even though we aren’t all able to communicate in Japanese very well.) During the drive to Kamaishi, one team member commented that many people started leaving Japan when disaster struck, but that’s when Christians began to come en masse.
We arrived in the city of Kamaishi, where the waterfront part of town was wiped out by the tsunami. As we stopped to take the picture below, we were told that bears came down from the hills immediately after the tsunami to forage for food in the wreckage. Imagine, after having endured the earthquake, tsunami, and loss of home/friends/family, survivors had to contend with bears, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with.
We visited a small shelter tucked away in a valley and started out by splitting up into two teams to have lunch with two different households. Soo took the boys and went with one team; I went with another and had lunch with a woman named Ito-san, who lives alone and can have one of the prettiest smiles I’ve ever seen. We sat down to eat a meal prepared by our team leader.
Ito-san is a bright woman with vast knowledge of world history, culture, and events. On her bookshelf was a collection of atlases, maps, encyclopedias, and books featuring cross-sections of cathedrals, castles, pyramids, and other magnificent structures from throughout history; she’s clearly an intelligent, well-read woman. As we looked at world maps together, one of our team mates mentioned the Red Sea, and she went on to tell us that she knows the story of Moses and the exodus. She later expressed that she hates religion (I wanted to reply that so do I, and so did Jesus), finds it divisive, and believes that money and politics have more to do with it than anything truly spiritual. (How could one argue with that?) Yet, Ito-san is open to talking about God, prays whenever she passes the town church, and accepts prayer from volunteers who stop by. Since she loves maps, I thought it might be appropriate to share with her the story of how I was now here in Japan with my family, due in part to a dream I had about a map of Iwate and Ofunato.
Our team leaders have known her since April, and they didn’t know until around September that Ito-san had a 20-something aged daughter whom she used to live with– until the tsunami took her life. Now, Ito-san lives alone and still can’t talk about what happened to her beloved only child on March 11th.
Afterwards, we did more of what we had done in Ofunato: pass out winter clothes, chat and build relationships, and invite the community to a foot-washing service. When I first heard about this, I thought that foot-washing sounded a little too Christianese, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how these were done: they were set up like salons where people could choose what kind of fancy bath salt they’d like to soak their feet in while we massaged their hands and shoulders. (The sensation of touch and contact with another human being could be comforting and healing for survivors.) The service reminded me a lot of Refresh, the day spa ministry that Newsong sometimes offers for single moms.
One of the women who came to the foot-washing had just moved into this shelter that morning. She told us that she had needed a bigger place to stay, as the shelter she was at previously was far too small. She used to live with her 29-year old son and his family before the disaster, but in the aftermath, they were placed in separate shelters, and in a tragic turn of events, her 21-month old grandson choked on a grape and passed away in August. Showing little emotion, this woman expressed that her grandson might still be alive had they all been together and she would have been around to watch the grandkids all day. Now, they could all move back in together at this larger unit, but there’s one less family member to house, to care for, to raise, to love…
At the end of our day in Kamaishi, Ito-san gave Matthew and Johann some bananas and a box of cookies. She thought they might be hungry after a long day at the shelter.
Even in the midst of personal loss, she was still thinking of others.
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These are just a handful of stories from people we’ve encountered over one weekend. There are hundreds of thousands more that we have yet to hear. Please keep Japan in your prayers, and pray about whether or not you might also be called to come and serve in Tohoku, whether for a week, a month, or more.
God already loves the people here. We’re just here to express that love in tangible ways.
