just dug through my photo library of all the photos i took in tohoku. it seems so long ago but i’m sure if you were there, it would probably seem like yesterday. M1 started April 5 (25 days after 3/11) when we left for the long 18 hour drive from wakayama to tohoku. our first stop was Minamisoma, which was in the radiation evacuation zone.
while we were approaching Minamisoma City, we suited up in our radiation uniforms. rain jacket, think long pants, rubber boots, mask, gloves, and goggles. we were so paranoid of the radiation and it was pretty scary going into the unknown. this is the main city district of Minamisoma. nobody was outside because the government told them not to. it was weird driving through there.
this is the zone where you will die if you went in. well, that’s what we thought. i really wanted to go in there to help, but at the same time, didn’t want to break the law.
this was the first time we seen the damage from the tsunami. it was so freaky because we all knew that there were still thousands of missing and thousands under the debris. it was very sad driving miles and miles through areas like this. but once we saw life, we stopped and helped. that first truck we emptied in 4 days.
i think experiences like this turn boys into men. naohiro was a little boy in my mind because i knew him at such a young age. but after this trip, he’s a man for sure. you experience things like this first hand, you grow pretty fast.
till this day, i’m still sad for the families that didn’t find their loved ones. this hurts the most. and watching the japanese military looking day in and day out for bodies was depressing.
i won’t lie. i broke down so many times. i thought i was living in a nightmare. and it must have been hard for the girls on our team because it was just too much to see in just a short period of time. the debris, the smell, the smoke, the cold. it was taking a toll on all of us. acco-chan and kana-chan taking a break.
this village in oshika hanto got totally destroyed. i don’t know where these fishermen went after this but it must have been hard on them. to live off the ocean every single day for your life, then it comes to an end in a flash. i hope they get to return to the ocean someday. but for now, the village is cleared out, but nobody lives there anymore.
then passing by village after village totally wiped out. that tsunami wall on the left wasn’t tall enough for 3/11.
then the more north we went, the worst it got. Ofunato and Rikuzentakata were gone! we were just silent driving through this. but we found a few people that needed supplies so we were happy to help. in fact, throughout M1, everybody was happy with the supplies we took.
i felt numb seeing these strong japanese fishing boats looking like this. this was exactly 1 month after 3/11 and was the last day of M1 as we ran out of supplies and it was time to go home. we had a good idea of what was needed, and what wasn’t. M2 was already in the planning and there was no way i could have come back home feeling the way i did after M1.
i went back to tokyo for a few days to reset my mind. it was weird going back to a big city where things looked so normal. there was plenty of food, there was electricity, and things looked normal. and to think that up north, things were so bad. i went to see the sakura in naka-meguro for a day. seeing the beauty of japan refreshed me and gave me my power back.
we went back to shonan to reload our vans. M2 was all about taking up fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafood. not the cheap kind, the OISHI kind. people from all over japan sent boxes and boxes of food and we made sure it got to the right people. 4 days after we came back from M1, we left for M2. photos coming soon.
