Kizuna 5 Day 4 Elementary School and Garbage from Tsunami

Today’s reports are Sheyengphia and Victor.

Today we  visited another place that got hit by the tsunami: Ishinomaki , Higashimatsushima and Yamaoto-cho.

With a local guide Ms. Takashina today we learned a lot more about what she had done to help out after devastation.  

We visited the reconstruction process. Mr. Shimizu has been engaged in work to reconstruct this area. 

In Higahisi Matsushima city, more than 1,000 residents lost their lives in the tsunami, and 28 people are still missing. 5499 houses were totally destroyed by the disaster. Everyday they are on the lookout for those missing people. Along with that is the debris after the tsunami. With so much debris it was as tall as 3 meter, taller than the electric poles, before they started to create a place for the debris. There was 1.65 million tons of debris. 3.8 million ton of soil was also collected at the debris site. Instead of burning the debris they decided to recycle it. The remaining 3% of debris couldn't be recycled so it was burned instead. 

Not only that but also they have made more jobs for people. The survivors account for 67% of people working here, out of 1000 workers. Arriving at a spot we observed the workers hard at work separating the valuable items from the bad. Even though we see a lot of them hard at work, the debris seems to towwer over the workers. 

After that we saw a train station that stopped working. The next station was also heavily damaged with the train bent and flipped over. Soon after the earthquake the US came there to help remove the trees that have fallen over, the Tomodachi Sakusen (The operation of Tomodachi)

After arriving at the community center, Mr. Sato showed us a slideshow of the current situation and what kind of measures what they were taking for temporary housing for people who lost their homes in the tsunami.

The first day after the disaster, the survivors didn't receive any food until the next day at the supermarket, when bananas and 1 onigiri (rice ball) per person, with no electricity. There was also no supply of clean water so they collected water from the rain, toilet tank, and over the hillside. 

Elementary school which lost 74 students to tsunami

In the afternoon we arrived at Big River (Okawa) elementary school, it was a very solemn mood. Here in Ishinomaki City, 3256 residents were killed by tsunami, and some of them are still missing. During the visit, we observed a moment of silence at severely damaged Okawa Elementary School, where 74 students (70% of the whole school) had lost their lives. Many students and teachers tried climbing the massive hill next to the school, however the tsunami swept through the opposite direction of school killing most everyone on the side of the mountain.

Ishinomaki community center

After that we went to the bay side city of Ishinomaki. Beforehand on the bus we had watched a real-time video of the tsunami on March 11, 2011. We had arrived at the Ishinomaki community center where the video had been filmed. The building had had much water damage done to it and is scheduled to be demolished. The building is dilapidated and you could visually see inside the building where the water from the March 11th disaster had reached its peak on the third floor.

With Mr Abe who had experienced tsunami and lost his house. He was our guide in the afternoon 

Dinner was super!!! It cost about $40 per person. It consisted of a nice piece of steak, sashimi, shrimp, pumpkin soup (yummy!), assorted seafoods, steamed vegetables, cheese and nice ham plate. Dessert was very fancy cake, strawberries and pineapple. The steak was the favorite of most.