Witness to catastrophe

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Colin Ptak photo
Pastries on the right and cold deserts and juice drinks on the left. The two left most beverage coolers in the middle of the picture are what is left of the various alcoholic drinks.

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Colin Ptak photo
My nearest convenience store, named Sunkus (word play that is a take off of the Japanese pronunciation of 'Thanks'). The store, usually open 24/7, has resorted to a 8 AM to 9 PM schedule because of the lack of stock and to save energy.

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Colin Ptak photo
Near the end of the line. It ended up being about 3/4 of a mile long, which is actually impressively small. In the days immediately after the quake there were lines as far as 2 1/2 miles long.

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Colin Ptak photo
The living room of my friends apartment in Esashi. A bit tight for three people, but we were able to stay in each others good graces.

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Colin Ptak photo
The reason for the long line of cars. This gas station, named Idemitsu, apparently has one of the few constant supplies in the city.

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Colin Ptak photo
This is a view of the east from just over the train tracks. In the distance is snow capped Mt. Hayachine, the second tallest mountain in the prefecture.

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Colin Ptak photo
Usually this aisle would be full of instant noodles and the like. These shelves were picked clean hours after we lost power and have still not been refilled.

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Colin Ptak photo
This was taken shortly after the quake. Missing are another dozen or so books that were resting on top of the pile and were now tiling the floor. Also, a cast iron vase larger than the vase pictured fell down with another loud crash.

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Colin Ptak photo
About the middle of the line. Though the traffic light is green all of these cars are parked with their engines turned off so as to not waste any gas.

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Colin Ptak photo
This is a view of the east from west of the train station. In the foreground are rice fields that will soon be planted and flooded.

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Colin Ptak photo
The black car is parked in line and empty. Probably the driver ran to a local restaurant to relieve him or herself. This is nearer to the end of the line.

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Colin Ptak photo
Pastries on the right and cold deserts and juice drinks on the left. The two left most beverage coolers in the middle of the picture are what is left of the various alcoholic drinks.

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For the past two years, I have been teaching junior high school English in Hanamaki, a rural city of about 115,000 in Iwate prefecture. The city is nestled amid the flatlands between two mountain ranges to the east and west in the lower middle of the prefecture. It is 42 miles inland, and therefore a safe distance from the tsunami that struck following the March 11 earthquake.

It is easy, in retrospect, to recognize the 7.2 earthquake that struck Wednesday, March 9, as a warning of things to come. A foreshock, as they are called, is an earthquake that precedes a larger earthquake and is related to the main event in regard to time and space. At the time, I thought it was the big one that would bring a number of lesser aftershocks in the coming days. If only nature had been so kind.

For a little more than 48 hours, it was the strongest earthquake I had ever experienced, and its 20 or 30 seconds of shaking, made worse by my being on the sixth floor of a building, felt long but manageable. I was in a meeting and, after laughing off the quake, we resumed the agenda with aplomb. I have lived in Japan for three years now, and when an earthquake hits, the first thing you do is wait to see how seriously you need to take it. Usually this requires looking at the reaction of your Japanese colleagues and acting accordingly. If you were to run at every tremor you would be very tired. Unfortunately, our Japanese colleague had just stepped into the hall.

When the 9.0 hit at 2:46 p.m. that Friday, it did not immediately reveal its awesome power. An earthquake does not shake with the same continuous force for its entire duration, but instead gets stronger and weaker in turn. You are left guessing as to what will come next and how strong it will be, but it all happens so fast that you end up just experiencing it. That said, it builds on itself, and when it lasts as long as this one did, the results turn out to be dramatic. When it began, hoping this to be an aftershock of decidedly less force than 7.2, I remained seated but alert, my laptop open and music playing. When the shaking turned violent, causing books, pictures and a vase to fall around me, I snapped my laptop shut and cowered beside my bed and the door leading out. It is said to have lasted between two and five minutes. I believe it, but I cannot specify with any more accuracy. I only remember wishing it would stop, and that was the moment my cast iron tea pot, a famous craft from the prefecture, fell from its drying place above my stove. It landed with a loud bang, mixed among the sound of coffee cups clattering, window panes shaking and the elongated, thundering roll that is the sound of an earthquake.

Miraculously, none of the buildings in Hanamaki collapsed. There was no power but water was still running. Cell phone towers were up, but any attempts at making a call or sending a text resulted in an error. It only took an hour or so for text messages to work again, but their delivery was spotty, sometimes not being received until hours or even days after they had been sent. Outgoing calls were impossible, but incoming calls, including from my brother in France, came in just fine. In retrospect, I am sure he was very aware of the extent of the damage. I know I told him I was not surprised of its gravity, given the shaking that I had felt, but even so when I got to see the footage myself, I was aware that there was a large tsunami, but the particulars at that early stage were still very vague for those living in the vicinity of the quake.

I spent that night alone in my apartment, wrapped up in a jacket, scarf and wool blanket. I took a quick trip outside to see how the city would look without lights. It was an eerie, but beautiful, sight, with the only light coming from a few passing cars and the waxing crescent moon. Sleep did not come easily, with aftershocks coming frequently and strong. I kept my valuables next to my bed in case I should need a speedy exit, and got up more than once on the threat of another big one. I was jumpy before I finally fell off to sleep. In the wake of one particularly strong aftershock in the early dawn of Saturday, after having been shaken from sleep, I decided I would rather be buried in bed were I was warm than outside in the cold. Now I realize that this was not the proper way to react.

Lines began to form in front of supermarkets and drug stores in the early hours Saturday morning. These lines were as orderly and calm as you have heard, though if you gain their confidence, most Japanese will admit to being scared, tired and demoralized. It is easy to see why, and after all, we are only human. Indeed, I have often felt the same since the quake. Some Japanese can be very sarcastic about this stoic trait, and many see it as dishonest at best. As I write this we have just had another aftershock. They are a fact of life around here at the moment, but they also bring a dread that was absent before.

Saturday evening, March 12, I fled 17 miles southeast of Hanamaki with two foreign friends to the rural town of Esashi. We pooled our food and stayed at an apartment there. Rice fields drew off into the distance outside the window, with the city of Mizusawa and distant western mountains as a backdrop. It was nice to have company, and indeed the three nights I stayed in Esashi have brought the best sleep I’ve had since March 11, despite the numerous aftershocks. We got power back at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday, after we had already tucked ourselves into bed. Awake again, we immediately started charging our cell phones and getting in touch with our families. That done, we tried getting in touch with our friends on the coast, a tricky proposition. It would be another three days before we received confirmation that all of our foreign teachers in the prefecture were safe; not a pleasant wait after having seen the footage on TV of cars, buildings and boats being swept away.

The second night in Esashi, Sunday, March 13, we visited a friend whose husband is a doctor. He had been to the coastal city of Ofunato that day to help take care of the dead. He predicted the death toll from the tsunami would exceed 20,000. I was dismayed to read this to be the case, reported for the first time on Monday, March 21, 10 days since this began. I remember telling my friends to wait and see whether it was true. Alas, it appears to be.

Our Japanese being passable in general conversation, but miserable in the face of an unfolding nuclear disaster, we were forced to rely on the muddy and contradictory accounts from overseas. The lack of clear information in the early days was scary, but I tried to put on a brave face every time we read about mass evacuations, reactors spewing smoke and nuclear meltdowns. Clarification would come in time, but for the time being we were safe and there was no need to panic.

The French Embassy, quick to provide updates but often reactionary and specious, did not help. Nor did panicked family members urging us to flee. I feel fortunate that mine respected my decision from the outset. The New York Times put up an article titled, “Some attempts with water canons and helicopters fail,” which I thought summed up nicely the Western media’s portrayal of the disaster. Some attempts also, apparently, having succeeded. Occasionally we would talk to our colleagues in the prefecture and they would be panicked, too. That was often the most difficult, and so these early days became an emotional rollercoaster.

As my foreign friends planned their exit from Japan, I returned to Hanamaki to stay with some Japanese friends so as not to be alone. Now, more than 10 days since the quake, I am back at my apartment. In Hanamaki, people are no longer lining up to enter grocery stores, though bread, milk and other essentials can be hard to find depending on the time that you visit. Convenience store shelves stand bare with operating hours shortened. Gasoline remains a most precious commodity, with only a handful of gas stations open, and none of them staying open past 4 p.m. due to low supplies. People often get in line at 5 a.m., if not earlier, and wait. Some park their cars in line the night before, and walk home to get a few hours sleep. Less patient and stoic, I have started to use my bicycle.

There is a great deal of uncertainty regarding Japans future at the moment, but they are a tenacious people and I have every faith that things will improve. I have chosen to stay in Japan to be a part of this rebuilding process. They are going to need all of the help that they can get.

Colin Ptak, a former resident of Amherst, is an English teacher in Japan. His parents still live in Amherst. He can be reached at cptak@smg.mv.com.