One Lone Pine Tree

On March 31, 2011 you will drive from Nagoya to Kamaishi with a man named Peter who is a missionary at the Nisshin Christian Church near Nagoya. Along with you will be his teenage daughter, and a nurse named Hitomi. You’ll be there for three days of volunteer work. Most of that time you’ll spend moving a mountain of garbage from one spot to another. There will be garbage everywhere, and thankfully it will still be cold in Kamaishi. It will even be snowing part of the time, and the streets won’t smell awful. The city will smell odd though. An unfamiliar smell. Part sea. Part salt. Part fish. Part dirt. Part wet paper. Part gasoline. Part rot. And part chalk. It will be a completely new odor for you. And it will permeate the entire city, except for right at the harbor where so much will be washed away that there will be little left to carry an odor at all.
You will have heard over and over again about people who have lost everything. These are easy words to say. But the depth of their meaning will come clear to you as you dig through this pile of garbage. It will be about ten meters by five meters, and half again as tall as you are. And in it you will truly find everything. Cabinets, a bathtub, dishes, flatware, refrigerators. A shower curtain. Sheets, cups, cooking things, books, photo albums, toys, knick-knacks, trinkets. Jewelry. An expensive camera. Lots of shoes, clothes, games, a world globe. Dead fish. Dead Crabs. Doors. Window frames. A mannequin. Styrofoam heads from a wig shop. Wet and filthy wigs. Tatami flooring. Light fixtures. Electric appliances. Scissors. Tools. A couple of bicycles. A tire on a wheel. A full fireman’s uniform including helmet and boots. A fire hose still wound up. Truly everything. All the accoutrements of modern life. Most of it mundane things that one takes for granted, but rarely thinks about.
These people really will have lost literally everything. There’s not a household item you can think of that you won’t find in that garbage pile in Kamaishi. You’ll even find a 100 yen coin. You’ll put it in your pocket and keep it. Officially, this will supposedly make you a looter. But it won’t be for the loot that you do this. It will be to remind you of what can happen—what will have happened. And a 100-yen coin will seem more appropriate to you than taking any of the things that actually belonged to people. Hundred-yen coins don’t belong to anybody. They exchange hands too fast to become anybody’s personal property. In a sense, though, this one will become yours. You’ll take it home with you and put it in a drawer.
In the morning you’ll walk with Peter to a refugee area where you’ll meet twelve people who will have survived the tsunami, ten adults and two young children. They will be cooking breakfast under a big blue tarp. There will be a bundle of play money attached to the underside of the tarp. “This is to make us feel rich, even if we aren’t,” you’ll be told by a man around 55 with a hearty smile. You’ll take a beautiful photo of him holding the money out to you, grinning.
He’ll tell you that the little boy is their kacho—department chief—he’s in charge of keeping the fire going. You’ll be surprised at how much firewood they have. Also at how welcome they make you feel. It will still be cold in the morning. Your hands will be freezing. A woman tells you that she likes gaikokujinn no kata. This is a politically correct way of saying foreign people. She wanted to marry one but never had a chance to meet one till now. Everybody will laugh at her. All of the women will be wearing masks. You’ll ask if there’s anything they need. Only rubber boots, they’ll say. These people with nothing but a stack of fake money to their names will ask for nothing else. But they could use some rubber boots to wear as they start digging out the garbage piles that their homes will have become.
From this shelter they will have watched the series of tsunami waves rush through their city, their homes, and their lives on the streets below. They will have watched the huge ship being tossed onto the levy, so large and so fast that they will wonder if it isn’t coming right for them. They will watch the water come within meters of where they will have fled to. Then they’ll watch it do a U-turn and rush out as fast as it will have rushed in. And their lives will have been changed forever.
“There were more of us at first,” they will tell you. “We’re the lucky ones.” Some, who had arrived safely at the refugee area, then ran back again to get items from their houses, or to lock their doors. None of those people will have returned. And only the twelve of them will remain. And these twelve will have come through the disaster a lot better off than a lot of others in Tohoku. They will have had food and water and aid almost from the beginning. They will have had roofs over their heads. And three weeks after the quake they will be living almost normal lives, except that they will have lost everything.
At the church where you’ll stay, you’ll meet a young woman holding a baby. The father will be among those already confirmed dead. The woman will be unable to smile. Unable to laugh. Maybe unable to cry. She will only sit on a stool and politely tell her story over and over again as if still in shock. Maybe she will be still in shock. Maybe she will always be in shock.
Maybe you will be too. Maybe everybody will be.
You’ll help two old women dig through the trash heap that has been their restaurant for 20 years, looking for items they want to keep, and as it will turn out, they’ll choose to keep almost nothing, not even the salvageable things, not even the valuable things. They’ll stand in the front lobby of the small place and say of almost every single thing that you and the others carry out, “iranai”. We don’t need it. And “Hontouni tasukete imasu. Arigatou gozaimashita.” Thank you so much. This is such a help. And you’ll be asking yourself how they can possibly feel like anything you are doing there is a help in any way. What’s left of the building is going to be bulldozed. Both the back wall and the roof of the building will have been crushed in or collapsed by the tsunami, and you’ll spend the whole time wondering if and when what little remains of the building is going to fall on you. You’ll feel like it would be different if they were actually trying to save things. But all you’ll hear is we don’t need it. We don’t need it. We don’t need it. And finally you will accept that maybe they don’t need it. You’ll accept that maybe you are helping them just by being there, just by paying attention, just by sympathizing.
Maybe that will be all you can effectively do.
Sympathize.
The entire city will be packed with people working to get things back in order again. The entire region will be. Within four minutes of the earthquake the Prime Minister will have set up a special disaster response unit within his office and will have taken command of the relief effort. Within the first hour, self defense forces, police officers and other rescue workers will be on their way to the afflicted area. In the first two days, 50,000 personnel will be mobilized. By early May over 160,000 personnel will have been deployed and more than 26,000 people rescued.
By mid April 110,000 members of Japan’s 240,000 member Self Defense Force will be in Tohoku. That will equal nearly half of them. There will be policemen from all over the country. In Kamaishi you’ll see policemen from Nagano Prefecture and Hyogo Prefecture directing traffic where traffic lights will be down because the power will still be out. On the highway you’ll see long convoys of police vehicles from several other prefectures, too. They’ll be going to Tohoku while you’ll be returning from there.
In Kamaishi you’ll see a group of pharmacists from Toyama Prefecture. You’ll see linemen from four different prefectures. And you’ll meet dozens of Christian volunteers doing much the same thing you’ll be doing—sympathizing and sorting through garbage. Most of them will be white native English speakers. Most of them will be residents of Japan.
And if careful readers wonder how you, the professed atheist, will be able to get along with a bunch of believers for four days, the answer is very well. Every one of the Christians you will meet in Tohoku will be very nice, especially Peter, who will become a friend of yours. They will all have the same goal that you will have—to help whatever people possible in whatever way they can. They will be very easy to get along with. Your own belief system does not involve rejection of other people because of theirs. Neither, apparently, does Peter’s.
At a nondenominational hostel set up in Tono to provide support for Christian groups volunteering in the area, one man will ask you about your ministry. You will tell him, of course, that you don’t have a ministry. You aren’t even a believer. “Why aren’t you?” he’ll ask.
“I’m not a believer because I don’t believe,” you’ll tell him quietly, not wanting to be in this conversation. “Religious beliefs are invariably based on faith. I base my beliefs on something else.”
“Do you believe in air?” he’ll ask you.
“Yes.”
“Can you see it?”
“No.” You’ll be cringing by now. You’ve never known well how to deal with the sophomoric and nonintellectual arguments of very nice people. You’re not equipped for it.
“So you believe in something you can’t see? Isn’t that a faith based decision?”
“In a sense, yes. It’s a decision based on faith in the scientific process. Scientists have used that to process to prove the existence of air, and I accept that proof. When the scientific process is used to prove the existence of God, I’ll accept that too. But not before then. ”
“Don’t you see proof of God before you every day of your life?”
“No, I don’t. In a way I’m envious of those who do, but personally, I don’t. And if I did, it would be nothing more than empirical evidence. The scientific process requires much more than empirical evidence. It requires experimentation. It requires numbers. It requires calculable evidence.”
“I see proof of God every day,” he will say. “It’s sad that you can’t see it.”

“I appreciate your sympathy,” you’ll say, “but I’m not saddened by this. I’m an intelligent man. I’m also an experienced man. I’m an old man.” You’ll emphasize the word old. You’ll say, “I grew up in a Christian society. I grew up in a Christian family. I suspect I know the Christian doctrine as well as you do. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it and plenty of time to decide whether I want to believe it or not. I don’t want to. That’s my decision and I’ happy with it. I don’t know what else there is to say about this.”
Then Peter will come to your rescue. “We’re all here doing the same work,” he’ll say. “We all feel a real sense of joy and hope about what little we have been able to do. We all have the same desire to help the people who are suffering here.” You’ll accept this interjection for exactly what it is, an offer of kind and thoughtful mediation. And so will the other man. There will be no more talk of god. None directed to you anyway.
The immediate rescue work will be finished well before you ever get to Tohoku. Most of that work will have been done by the Japanese Self Defense Force, but even within the first three days there will have been teams with search dogs from the United States, England, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand there as well, searching for survivors but finding mostly only bodies. They will have spray-painted circles with exes in them on buildings and vehicles all over the city. This is the international sign to indicate the property has been searched and no living beings remain within. On many buildings they’ll have written the name of the team that searched it, along with the date of the search.
Aid will have been delivered and distributed by the thousands of tons. It will have arrived from all over the world, including Nagoya, where you will have personally helped to load seven trucks with 20 tons of material. It will be backbreaking work, but better by far than the heartbreaking lot of not being able to do anything at all.
Some of the first material to arrive at any of the stricken areas will have been delivered by Japan’s notorious Yakuza. While the expressways are closed and the government is fussing with how to implement a system of permits to allow vehicles into the area, the yakuza will simply drive in along the back roads and quietly deliver stuff. They’re the underworld, after all. They won’t need permits. They’ll just go in without them. And this isn’t unusual. They’re invariably among the first to react to a natural disaster in Japan. In 1995 in Kobe, for the first 24 hours, the Yakuza were the only organizations helping anybody in the city. They’re criminals, yes. And thugs. But they’re white-collar thugs, involved in extortion, gambling, prostitution, pornography, and, of course, Japan’s ugly construction industry. But they believe in helping people when help is needed. Even if it’s the same people they normally prey upon. Within the first two weeks they will have sent 70 trucks with half a million dollars worth of supplies to Tohoku.
They believe in law and order, strangely enough. And another of the services they will take it upon themselves to provide in the stricken areas of Tohoko is security. The protection the yakuza will provide will be one of the reasons there will be so little looting and theft here. There will be some of that, especially around the tenth day after the quake, when everything is at its worst, but really very little.
The biggest reason there will be so little of that is neither the presence of the Yakuza nor the police, however. Rather it is simply that the Japanese are the Japanese. White-collar crime and corruption have traditionally been accepted here. In fact, they are ingrained in the culture. But petty crime is almost unthinkable. Really. It doesn’t even seem to cross people’s minds. Almost no Japanese person would even consider keeping the 100-yen coin you’re going to pick up and put in your pocket up here. They would leave it in the trash pile before they would do that.
At Rikuzen Takata you’ll get out of the car near the station and approach a man working beside a piece of heavy machinery that’s picking up bent and twisted, unrecognizable junk and dropping systematically into the bed of a truck. He’ll listen to you carefully, giving his full, if very tired, attention. You’ll ask him, “Are you from here.”
“Yes. Mostly,” he’ll say. “What is it?” He’ll seem to already understand that you’re going to ask about the whereabouts of somebody. And you’ll realize that surely he’ll have been approached in this way countless times over the prior few weeks. You’ll see true kindness in his eyes, and emotional exhaustion, but no emotion.
“There was a lumber mill right over there,” you’ll say, pointing back to your right, across the road from where Peter’s car is parked.
“Yes,” he’ll say, “the Owada manufacturing company.”
“I know the owner’s wife.”
“Owada-san’s young wife?” he says. “She’s alive.”
She’s alive. She’s alive.
Strangely, this will become one of the most emotion filled moments of your life, and the feeling of relief that overcomes you right there in the very moment will both surprise and embarrass you. You won’t even know the woman.  Not really. All you’ll know is that she will have made the two rice balls that you’re holding in your hand right now. You’ll look away from the man, holding back tears. After everything he’ll have already been through, you won’t make him have to stand there and watch you cry like a clown, when you won’t yourself have actually been through anything but an underlying sadness which he will have just then largely relieved. You’ll be entirely overwhelmed to hear this news. You’ll stare off into the distance, towards the beach with all the famous pine trees that hold so little interest for you today. There will only be one of them still standing. The others will have been uprooted and washed away, like everything else within sight.
That one lone pine tree will soon become a symbol of the destruction that’s going to take place here.
Eventually you’ll bow to the man and say, “domo.” This is the single most useful word in the Japanese language. It means what ever the speaker wants it to mean, with the simple caveat that whatever the speaker wants it to mean must include a sense of deference to the one he’s addressing. It says everything that might otherwise go without saying, but does so decided respect. “Domo.”
The man points to the next machine down the way. “The man in that shovel knows her. He can tell you where to find her. I don’t know where she is. I’m sorry.” If anything, the man’s eyes will have now grown even kinder. You’ll notice for the first time how young he is—maybe half your age. You’ll notice this in spite of the fact that he doesn’t really look young. He doesn’t look anything but tired. Tired, gentle and kind.
You’ll walk quickly to the next machine. It will be about 200 kilometers away. You’ll have to skip over the occasional hunk of junk, but for the most part you’ll be walking on dust and dirt—dust and dirt that will smell much the way the garbage lined streets of Kamaishi will have smelled. But here, in Rikuzen Takata, not even the streets will remain in tact.
You’ll explain to the man on the ground at the second machine what you want. You’ll tell him that the man you just spoke with believes the man operating the machine can help you. This man will be about your age, and he too will listen carefully. Then he’ll call the other man out of the machine. “Go ahead and turn it off,” he’ll say to him. Then that man will climb down from the equipment. He will also be young. Maybe thirty-five. Both men will look as tired as the first man. Both will have the same look of exhaustion and kindness in their eyes.
When you ask your question the young machine operator will say, “Owada-san’s young wife?”
“I guess she’s about 40,” you’ll say.
He’ll say, “Yes,” acknowledging that Owada-san’s young wife is at least five years older than he himself will appear to be. “She’s staying at Yonezaki Elementary School. Do you know how to get there?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Are you driving?”
“Yes.”
“Owada-san was working around the mill this morning. Maybe he’s still there. Did you look for him?” he’ll say.
“I don’t know Owada-san,” you’ll say. “Only the wife.”
When you get to the shelter at the grade school there will be entire families living in small cubicles, about three meters by thee meters, marked out on the gymnasium floor. The cubicles will have walls about 30 centimeters high made of cloth curtains hung over wires, and those curtains are all that will separate one family from another. You’ll feel an odd excitement about Owada-san’s young wife as you approach the reception desk, but she will no longer be staying there. She’ll have already gone to stay with relatives, and the man at the shelter will tell you they don’t have a forwarding address for her, but they will be able to get a message to her if you want to leave one.
So you do. You ask Hitomi, the nurse, to write it for you. All it really says is that you’re sorry it has taken you so long to thank her for the rice balls and tea, that you’re saddened by all that has happened, and that you’re so glad to know she is doing well. You leave your email address.
You won’t know if she ever gets your message or not, though.
She won’t reply.

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