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A New Symbol: The Japan Tsunami Debris Monument

A crowd was gathered on a bright and sunny Monday afternoon in EleEle,
Hawaii and in the distance the glittering waves could be heard crashing down on the
yellow sand where the palm trees gave shade to the fantastical scenery. They were
there for a ceremony in honor of the thousands that lost their lives at the site of a
gorgeous view not unlike the Hawaiian waterfront. Iwaki City, Japan was a beautiful
and tropical place and the water was calm and sparkling in the sun on a mellow
weathered day when the whole ocean began to recede, only to come crashing back
with a force that tore away lives, land, and definitely the beauty. The Tohoku
Tsunami left several coastal Japanese cities in a similar state; muddy, ugly, desolate,
and littered with the debris of lost belongings, broken down houses, and dead and
suffering people in desperate need of aid that might not come for days.
According to the National Police Agency, the earthquake and tsunami
rounded up a horrific 15,885 confirmed deaths, 6,148 injured, and 2,623 people
missing, which is no surprise considering the scale of the disaster. The earthquake
had an earth shattering magnitude of 9.0 and there were over 80 aftershocks with
magnitudes over 7.0 as well. The wave that followed reached towering heights over
110 ft.
But numbers, no matter how astounding, hold little weight against the power
of human experience. Nothing can grasp the size and devastation better than
someone who suffered through it. Its almost hard to believe anyone could survive
such great forces of nature, but just like thousands were killed, thousands survived,
but even though they live, many are still suffering three years later.
Hatsuko Ishikawa blames herself for her 36-year-old sons death. I blame
myself over and over again, asking myself why I didnt stop him, she said when
describing how she saw him speed by in his fire truck towards the sea in an attempt
to evacuate people before the massive wave struck. She is just one of many
survivors that mourn their lost loved ones, sadly blaming themselves for not doing
the right thing in the midst of the total chaos of the whole ocean surging towards
them in its brown and churning brilliance, tossing limp bodies through the debris
like a blender, and turning the stomachs of those who saw it coming and knew they
couldnt outrun it, or saw it coming for their family members and knew they
couldnt be the hero.
The earthquake and tsunami tore through everything and in the days,
months and years that followed, even more died without water or food and the
hospitals that were still intact were crowded, and the dead were buried by the
government in hastily dug graves. Then there was silence. Silence as small towns
were reduced to nearly nothing, and the missing pieces couldnt be replaced. The
children that lived in the house on the corner didnt play in the street anymore, and
the space they had taken up was left oddly empty, their soundless sounds still
reverberating and their parents still lived in a temporary house. The neighbors
that had lived next door to them werent the same either. Where there had been a
happy couple, now only a woman sits alone, holding on to the memories of her
husband, crying silent tears in the dark, too afraid of the world outside, of the water.
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And changes like those stretch for miles. After the disaster the lives of thousands of
people would never be the same. The phantom feeling of their lost limbs or the
memory of their lungs being filled with muddy water as they claw blindly through
the turmoil, searching for oxygen will still awake those that lived through it.
Families might still say table for 5 when they go to dinner and then look to their
feet in the awkward silence of the sad realization that will follow. Mothers might
still buy their childs favorite food at the store, the thing no one else in the family
likes, to be left to perish, uneaten. And although the world will still turn, every life
taken, changed the course of another.
This is the unfortunate picture that the crowd in Kauai was pained to
remember as a moment of silence and a melancholy haze fell over them. Every
survivor of the disaster has a different story, a different memory, and a different
loss. But they all remember what they felt that day. They all have lost something.
They all are still suffering emotionally and physically. They all will continue to
support each other as they struggle through their derailed lives. And they will all
remember the one lone pine tree that survived, and look to it as a symbol of hope.
Over a hundred people, including a delegation of 19 that traveled from Japan to
Kauai for the dedication, attended the ceremony on Monday. The new monument, a
piece of debris that was found floating near Kauai nearly 2 years after the tsunami,
is a tall and proud shining yellow buoy that has had quite the journey from its
original home in Iwaki. Chris Benjamin, the owner of Port Allen, where the
monument will be, says it Stands as an educational tool and a symbol of our strong
ties to Japan. The vice mayor of Iwaki also commented about how the monument
will be a symbol of how the ties of their cities are stronger even than the terrific
forces of nature and the 7,000 mile ocean between them, saying Three years have
passed since the disaster, and we are committed to working hard to make Iwaki
even stronger than it was. We appreciate this symbol of goodwill between our
cities. Its not the first monument of the event, and may not be the last, but like the
miracle pine, it will hold a deep value and stand as a strong symbol for hope and the
abstract though unbreakable bonds of love, unity, and human compassion that
survive and thrive through even the most destructive forces.