Volunteering in Ishinomaki

A report from volunteer Daniel Pierce, originally published on JPNLND, http://daniel-and-emma.tumblr.com/

DEPARTURE

After many orientations and meeting our new team of international volunteers, we finally heaved our bags onto our shoulders and walked to the bus that would take us to Ishinomaki, the hardest hit citiy in the March 11 disaster. I say hardest hit because they lost the most people and have the largest amount of missing. Over 2,500 dead and over 4,600 still missing to be exact.

Hours before, 14 foreigners, complete strangers all, met amongst an army of friendly Japanese in the headquarters for Peace Boat, an international volunteer organization. We were put into two teams and to my surprise, I was the only American (not on the Peace Boat staff at least) in the bunch. The rest of the two groups were compromised of people from Australia, England, and even one from France who decided to take a detour on his 3 month back packing trip through Japan.

Before coming to Tokyo we were told to bring a tent, warm sleeping bag, and food and water for 1 week. I’m not going to lie. I stressed for hours on end trying to figure out what to take and not to take on what I knew would be a life changing experience. With some help from Emma, I bought some heavy duty mud boots, boxes of calorie mates (dry food bars) first aid kits, and fuel for my stove. Lugging my backpacking pack with a weeks worth of food, my tent and sleeping bag and clothes for a week was not a fun experience while navigating the Tokyo trains…

We left Tokyo at around 11pm on our overnight journey to Ishinomaki. We drove through Sendai and Fukushima and while drifting in and out of sleep I caught glances of the disaster from the bus window. Farm lands were flooded with sea water, as well as debris from nearby houses and even some upside down cars. Parking lots looked like a children’s play pen full of upturned cars and even semi trucks precariously resting on the edge of a river.

I turned on my ipod and managed to force myself to sleep the rest of the way, and in 8 hours we arrived.  Immediately after departing the bus, media cameras and boom mikes were pushed into our faces and we forced groggy smiles and made our way to the campground: the track field of Senshu University in Ishinomaki.

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