life more beautiful: The Japan Quake (4): A glimpse of the devastation

I woke up at 8am the next morning, after a short but much-needed slumber. A little later than I hoped to, and the other three were up already. As it turns out, we couldn’t leave yet. Our drivers, who joined the queue at a petrol kiosk the night before, told us that the kiosk had just opened, and they would probably take a couple of hours before they could fill their tank. It was March 14.

The Chinese reporters told us about a long queue at a bus stop just opposite the town office, so I headed there to take a look. Stepping out into the streets, however, I could scarcely believe that the prefecture had just been hit by one of its worst disasters on record. People were actually heading back to work. I heard that the subway had partially resumed operations.

There was a queue of at least 500 people at the bus stop, by my estimation, and the queue snaked around the small park behind it, and continued on the broad pavement across the road. It turns out that the people there were queuing for a bus to Yamagata prefecture, from which they could then head off to Tokyo and the western cities. (Yamagata, to the south west of Miyagi, was not really affected by the quake.) Many had started queuing early in the morning, and more people were joining the queue by the minute.

After that I headed back to the town office, where I spoke to a young volunteer named Satou about the situation. The 25-year-old told me that he was originally from Yamagata, and his family has already left Sendai. However, his girlfriend was stuck in nearby Tagajo City, and he is staying behind with the hope of meeting her soon. They have been keeping in touch through email.

Soon, it was time to head out. We wanted to move northeast, towards to the worst hit towns of Ishinomaki and Kesennuma.

Our first stop was Sendai’s port, just about 30 min away from the city centre.

There was a sense of foreboding as we approached. We could tell we were entering a place struck by the tsunami, as the roads became sandy. The streets leading into the port – which no doubt would have been bustling on a typical Monday like this in better times – were empty. And we soon started hearing sirens wailing around us, warning of a possible tsunami. Helicopters whizzed over us, repeating the warning over and over again. But we were too starved of good news material to turn around.

Soon, we finally caught our first glimpse of the scale of destruction caused by the tsunami. Cars stacked up on top of one another like toys, broken glass on building facades and rubbish strewn all over the place. It was a thrilling sight, from a journalist’s point of view. Yet it was horrifying at the same time. Our trip has begun.

We stopped by a couple of spots in the port, to look around and take some pictures. I spoke to a manager of a trade promotion company based there. He was there when it happened, and now he is there to pick up the pieces. Yet he was apparently at a loss of where to start, he told me.

The predicted tsunami, by the way, never came.

We continued to head eastward, and reached the town of Tagajo – where Satou’s girlfriend is stuck at. We delved into a residential area, where many residents are left stranded without food, water and electricity. I lent my phone to a woman standing outside a ravaged Lawson convenience store, who lived in Tagajo alone and had not been able to make calls to her family. She seemed terribly distraught. Her call was not picked up, unfortunately, but she left a voice message. I hope she eventually managed to get in touch.

I also spoke to an elderly man, who lives in a two-storey house with his wife. He was trying to clear up the rubbish in his front yard when I walked by, and his car was wedged diagonally in his tiny garage. He is luckier than the woman I had met earlier, because he is not alone. Further, one of his children had driven all the way up from Chiba prefecture (that’s where Narita airport is) to look for him immediately after the quake. His grand daughter and her husband, who live in Miyagi, have been visiting him and bringing him supplies.

We soon hit a roadblock, literally. The road eastward was closed off by the police. And because of the limited fuel, the drivers refused to take any detours. So we settled on heading westward, towards a fishing village that the Hong Kong journalists had told us about – Yuriage.

We never reached there, however. Our final stop of the day was Wakabayashi ward, in south-east Sendai. This was the place where 200 to 300 bodies were reportedly found on the day of the tsunami. I remembered it clearly because I spotted the news flash on Yomiuri Shimbun that evening.

Police officers were standing guard at the main entrance, and I tried to talk to people who were trying to get in. Some of them were residents, while others have friends who lived inside. An elderly woman came back, hoping to see her house before she left with her son to Gifu prefecture. An old man was there, trying to see if he could get in and confirm if his colleague was killed by the tsunami. But all were refused entry. Apparently almost all the residents have been evacuated to shelters nearby.

We later headed to the nearest shelter, a school gym, hoping to talk to some refugees. Unfortunately, we were quickly spotted by volunteer staff, who insisted that we seek permission from the person in charge. I obliged, but our request was turned down. It was almost 5pm by then, and we had to head back to the Sendai City office.

Cars stacked up at Sendai’s port. We were quite excited when we first saw this, but scenes like this proved later all too common in the coastal areas struck by the tsunami.

We bumped into some TV crew from the UK’s Sky TV at Sendai port. There was a tsunami warning just a while before this (helicopters wailing above us and all), and they were waiting to film the advance of the water. The tsunami never came and the warning was later lifted.