Following the terrible tragedy in Japan and having a big soft spot for the country and its people, I thought I’d re-post something my good friend Becky Dokmanovic recently wrote. She’s been living in Japan for the last four years and has fallen head-over-heels in love with the place. Naturally the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami has touched her in ways those of us looking in from the outside will never know. Her words really moved me.
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It’s 3am and as usual, sleep is just beyond my reach. As I lie in bed, eyes wide open and staring blankly at the ceiling, a thousand thoughts race through my weary mind.
At present I live in Fukushima, Japan. It’s a quiet, pretty and rather unpretentious prefecture, located north of Tokyo in the Tohoku region. Up until a few weeks ago, this was a name that didn’t register with too many people. After the events of March 11th all that changed, as this beautiful place that I have called home for three years was dragged under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
The day that the 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck Japan, I was working at a school in Koriyama city-just a few kilometres away from my apartment. As the teachers and students crouched down in the open grounds in front of the building, no-one could have imagined the sheer scale of the devastation that was occurring on the coast at that very moment. As I clung to a few of the smaller school children, desperately trying to reassure them that everything was going to be fine, a deadly tsunami was hungrily tearing its way through the coastal villages of eastern Japan.
Nobody saw it coming. Nobody stood a chance.
The powerful force of the waves robbed thousands of people of their lives, and destroyed any buildings, trees and vehicles that stood in its path. Whole villages were literally obliterated in a few short seconds. It’s hard to imagine how this situation could get any worse – but it did. Since the first abnormalities were reported at the Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant the next day, the whole world has been gripped, while the foreign media has had a field day. The front pages of newspapers warned us of the dangers of a total nuclear meltdown and “black rain”, as TV news reporters gravely told us that the end of the world was just around the corner…
As I read through these sensationalist articles, my heart sinks. I am absolutely disgusted by how the foreign media has portrayed this tragedy. The vast majority of these pieces are riddled with inaccuracies and are nothing more than horribly insensitive examples of irresponsible fear-mongering. People both here in Japan and across the world are battling against the invisible enemy of radiation. However, while most newspapers are busy telling us that Japan is about to blow up any minute, I worry that the real and very tangible victims of this catastrophe are largely being ignored. It seems that nowadays, the threat of an apocalypse will sell more copies than boring old human suffering.
Soon after the earthquake hit, I made the decision to go to Iwaki – a city about 45 kilometres from the reactors. Iwaki is a place that is and shall remain very dear to me. Some of my best memories of Japan have sprung from this city, and I was shocked to see how much it had changed over the course of a week. Once a lively and quirky area – Iwaki is now almost completely deserted. There is no running water here, and as a result, restaurants, convenience stores, shops, bakeries, hotels, supermarkets and banks are all closed. Petrol was largely unavailable until very recently, and even now, it is heavily rationed and creates queues that snake up to 5 kilometres long. For the few that remain in this city, escape is quite impossible. Getting hold of enough food and water is difficult enough, especially for those victims now living in shelters, and patients who are bed ridden at nearby hospitals.
I came back here because I want to help breathe life into this ghost town.
The other day I had some time to kill, and so I went for a walk which took me past my favourite organic café. When I looked inside I saw that nothing had been done to the place since the earthquake. Like the smashed face of a broken watch, chairs lay sideways on the floor, books had spilled out from their shelves, and lamp shades dangled precariously from the ceiling. I felt like time had stopped. I could see only myself reflected in the glass windows and at that moment the loneliness and sadness that washed over me was quite overwhelming.
As Japan slowly picks itself up and dusts itself off, I’m stuck in an agonising game of tug of war. My heart begs me to stay-it pulls at my hand as it drags its heels into the ground. I really do want to continue volunteering and doing anything and everything that I can to help people here…but my head firmly asserts that it’s time to go. I have a pre-booked flight to Thailand that leaves today, and I promised my father that I would be on it. Unfortunately he has latched onto the bait thrown out by the foreign media, and for the past 2 weeks, has been beside himself with panic. He rings me everyday, to remind me that my life is in danger and that I am being selfish by staying here. My relationship with my father is rather complicated, and our severed ties have only been recently reconnected. I don’t want to lose him again, and so I feel as if I have no choice but to leave.
So now, I find myself at Narita airport, feeling extremely unsettled, confused, frustrated ad exhausted all at the same time. This country has given me so much over the past 3 years and to leave it at a time like this breaks my heart…all I can do now is to look forward to returning on April 4th to continue helping, and raising awareness for the various troubles faced by the victims here.
The other day I watched an interview with one of the tsunami victims on TV. She was rummaging through the rubble of what used to be her home, looking for her missing granddaughter, Yui. In her garden she found a baby plum tree that her family had planted when Yui was born. Despite the destruction that littered the surrounding area, this tree was largely undamaged, and several buds were still intact. Seeing that tree made me think of Japan. This wonderful country may be bruised and battered beyond recognition, but someday, just like these fragile plum buds – it will bloom once more.
I worry that from now on when people hear the word Fukushima, they will equate it with “that nuclear disaster,” when for me it is SO much more than that. Fukushima is warm summer days spent eating peaches, and it’s cold winter nights spent under the cosy comfort of my kotatsu… It’s the beautiful sakura petals that flower and delicately dance their way to the ground. It’s the rich ruby reds, and canary yellows that cover autumnal landscapes. Whatever happens to Fukushima, I am and will continue to be proud to call it my home.
Rebecca Dokmanovic
