Japan tsunami: Recovery, so slowly

JAPAN - It has been more than two years since the disaster but brain surgeon Hitoshi Suzuki still does not like talking about it. There are some wounds time cannot heal.

"I never want to remember the disaster, too many people died," said Dr Suzuki, 66, who lectures at the Ishinomaki Senshu University. The university is named after a fishing town in Japan's Miyagi prefecture, 150km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex.

In Ishinomaki, there are many who, like Dr Suzuki, wish to forget. But forgetting is difficult when reminders of the disaster are everywhere. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck about 70km off Ishinomaki's coast, causing tsunami waves over 7m high to crash over the fishing port, killing some 3,500 people and destroying and damaging almost three in four homes.

The earthquake and tsunami caused widespread destruction in three prefectures - Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima - and to this day are responsible for the enduring nuclear crisis in the country.

Late last month, 13 student journalists from Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information spent 12 days in the fishing port of Ishinomaki - one of the worst-hit in the disaster - to document the struggles of residents and the reconstruction effort.

Their assignment was for the school's Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting (Go-Far) programme, an annual journalism course which exposes students to the challenges of reporting in a foreign country. Go-Far is supported by the Wee Kim Wee Legacy Fund and the Shinnyo-en Foundation.

Ishinomaki was chosen for this year's trip because it was one of the worst-hit towns.

With a population of 150,000, Ishinomaki is no bustling metropolis but it is still the second-biggest city in Miyagi prefecture. Its situation is typical of that in other disaster-stricken communities in north-eastern Japan.

Derelict homes dot the old neighbourhoods by the sea. The grass is overgrown and there are only traces of the numerous houses that were torn from their foundations when the water came. Bigger buildings like schools survived the onslaught but they too are abandoned, their halls devoid of the laughter of children.

Today, close to 29,000 people still languish in numerous temporary housing complexes and rental homes around Ishinomaki.

Radiation fears are a concern especially to those working in the fishing industry. The town once boasted Japan's third-biggest fishing port. More pressing are the daily struggles of ordinary people. Jobs, housing and education are just some of the concerns made more critical in the wake of the disaster.

People like Dr Suzuki have put their expertise to good use. Every weekend he travels 80km to the fishing village of Kesennuma to train medical staff in emergency services. The tsunami swept away the village's hospital, killing a third of its doctors.

Here was an ordinary town full of everyday heroes, filled with the conviction that life would and must go on.

From the 15-year-old girl who plays her saxophone to bring cheer to neighbours to the 33-year-old Jamaican gospel singer who has lived in Ishinomaki for 13 years and now travels the country giving concerts to raise money for relief efforts, it seemed everyone had a story to tell.

And from their stories, we learnt that life after the tsunami was a struggle even in First World, ultra-modern Japan.

For starters, rebuilding efforts have been very slow. Thousands remain in temporary housing because there are not enough workers to build the new homes so urgently needed. The idea of bringing in foreign workers to deal with the shortage, something Singaporeans are so used to, is alien to Japan.

Every time we asked about importing foreign labour to speed up the delayed projects, we were told that workers must speak Japanese and understand the Japanese way of doing things. But the tsunami did succeed in breaking down other barriers.

Attitudes towards foreigners changed in the small fishing towns after locals saw foreign wives and other immigrants rolling up their sleeves to help get life started again. Families took in children orphaned by the tsunami, and there were signs that family ties strengthened after the disaster.

As Mr Mamoru Kimura, an 81-year-old former tuna fisherman, put it: "If you have your own home, and are living together with your family, you don't have to be afraid of anything any more."

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