Life and Death at 17

I've often said here in Tohoku, the difference between who's a "local" and who's from "away" is pretty drastic.  Introductions are peppered with "I'm so-and-so's child" and "my dad owns the such-and-such store."  This places people.  Pecking order, family feuds, whether or not business transactions will take place, if friendships will be established, these are all set by these pronouncements of placement.  Exempt from this, I tell people I am from the outer most layer of the onion.

The onion is comprised first of family, then local block, neighborhood, city, locality, prefecture, region, country, and the rest of the world.  I'm from the "outer, outer, outer, outer, outer" layer.  The number of "outer"s I say out loud isn't the point.  It's more about the fact I'm from "way, way, way out there."

I long ago learned how much of an advantage this is.  Locals don't complain as it is, much less to their neighbors.  "We're all in the same boat," I've been told, over and over.  Everyone here is a victim of disaster in one way or another.  I'm not.  That I represent the furthest place out people can imagine means I'm safe to complain to.  That I can't possibly relate makes it easy to identify me as someone who can listen.  Most of all, that I'm anything but a "local" means it's okay to say to me what can't be said to family and friends.

There's another sort of "outsider."  There are several locals who have been anointed with this sacred bond of trust.  The unwritten credo of not complaining to anyone "from here" is broken, and blatantly at that with these few.  Takayuki Niinuma is one of the chosen.

His job description on Facebook is "Mayor of the Night in Ofunato."  If you knew him you'd see how perfect this was.  He drives a flashy car with tinted windows.  He swaggers just a bit.  He projects "bad." For those who can't see through to his inner core, he's feared.  Shunned.  He has a past worthy of this reputation.  A trouble-maker in town since he was a kid, his language is coarse.  He doesn't mince words.  People walk the other way when they see him coming.  This makes him, for some, the perfect confidant.

Those who are truly at the bottom, who don't know how to keep going, who've lost the will to go on, who have such tragic stories they can't possibly be real--these people find Taka.  The stories people tell him are nightmarish.  This is one such story.

The sports center in Rikuzentakata with its large gymnasium was a designated evacuation spot.  In the case a tsunami hit the city, residents were to come here.  Hundreds of people gathered here a year ago on March 11th to wait out the tsunami warning.  No one, no one ever expected the wave to be high enough to flood the gym.

"When the tsunami came, it blew in the front door, water poured in from the second story windows, and next thing they knew everyone who wasn't already dead fought their way up to these beams," Taka tells me.

"This 17-year old girl and her friends, they were all hanging on to these beams on the ceiling.  Below them is this whirlpool of water with crap in it.  They know if they let go they're dead."  I think back to what I saw in the gym when I visited last time, and I start to shake.

"Then the wall blew out."  The pressure from the water and the wave continuing to crash in did indeed blow out a wall.  "This meant the water that was holding them up, they're hanging onto the beams, right?  This water got sucked out through the hole in the wall with real force.  People couldn't hang on.  Some got swept out along with the pull of the water flowing out, and others clung on for dear life.  This girl clung.  This girl saw this.  She saw all this.  There's more.  Those who are hanging on just with their hands, they're hanging onto these beams by their hands, right?  They're wet.  They're freezing.  Some couldn't hang on anymore.  They started to drop.  One by one.  They fell down onto the floor of the gym where all this debris was.  Her best friend from childhood fell, too.  She heard the thuds.  She heard them scream.  She watched her friend lay on the floor, twitching, bleeding out.  Her friend finally died.  This girl saw all that."

The reason the girl telling the story survived is another unbelievable tale.  While others hung onto the beams with only their hands, she clung on with her hands and feet, her back to the floor.  After seeing and hearing everyone else around her fall to their deaths, she made her way down a beam, slithering essentially, moving inch by inch until she reached the end.  What the photo doesn't show is that the end of the beam hits a wall, and there's still a three-meter jump to the floor from there.  I follow each beam with my eyes, wondering in silent awe how this was possible.  Could I do this?  To save my own life, could I, would I do this?  Or, would I give up?  Would I let myself die?

At seventeen, I had boyfriends, snuck out of the dorm at night evading the headmaster that lived next door, riding around on motorcycles avoiding the eyes of any teacher that might be out for a nightly stroll.  I played, shopped, sometimes studied, and enjoyed being a teenager.  I've wondered over and over what I would be like today if I went through what this girl experienced--at seventeen.

The gym still looks like this, today, 16 months after the tsunami.  I'm not allowed into the gym but ignore the "Do Not Enter" signs.  These images need recording.  These stories need repeating.  Unimaginable pain and horror experienced by this 17-year old girl brings me to my knees.

That she sought out Taka to tell her story is a testament to his stature.  The trust she placed in him to unburden herself, to sob, to say she will never ever go back to Rikuzentakata is all a gift he has, "bad" as he may be.  In telling me these stories he's unburdening himself as well.  By writing this, I'm letting my grief out, too.  Here in Tohoku we support each other as the rings of friendship expand overlapping from person to person.  This is a key reason I'm here.  For this, I'll stay.