SENDAI, Miyagi Prefecture -- Many English teachers come to Japan looking for adventure. For a few Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) participants in Miyagi Prefecture, that adventure turned out to be the biggest earthquake recorded in Japan, a devastating tsunami and a nuclear crisis.
SENDAI, Miyagi Prefecture -- Many English teachers come to Japan looking for adventure. For a few Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) participants in Miyagi Prefecture, that adventure turned out to be the biggest earthquake recorded in Japan, a devastating tsunami and a nuclear crisis.
“The trauma didn’t cease. There was no food. There was no water. There were nuclear reactors exploding,” recalls Liam Stormonth, a JET based near Natori in Miyagi Prefecture.
Many of the JETs in Sendai, near the epicenter of the magnitude-9.0 quake that struck on March 11, 2011, temporarily left the country after the disaster.
Some were worried about the health effects of radiation from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Others were more concerned with placating panicking families back home. All were tired of having no electricity, gas or running water at home, and of the interminable lines for food and gasoline.
When the quake hit at 2:46 p.m., Stormonth, 25, Sarah Doherty, 27, Mina Greb, 42, Emma Price, 24 and Mike Levine, 40, were all at their schools.
The tremors were so strong it was difficult to stand. One shock smacked Price’s head into the desk she had taken shelter under.
“It was like two giants had picked up the building and were shaking it from side to side,” says Stormonth. “I remember listening to it and being reminded of the scene in ‘Titanic’ where (the boat) rips in half.”
After the initial shocks were over and the pupils had been sent home, supervisors told the teachers to go home. For some, that wasn’t possible. Stormonth arrived home to find his fridge in his bedroom and his gas stove on the floor, having been ripped off the wall.
He grabbed a blanket and some essentials and headed to an evacuation center to spend the night. None of the others had either power or running water at home, and the shops were stripped bare of food within a few hours.
Meanwhile, Cameron Peek, a coordinator for international relations at the prefectural office, had the job of trying to confirm the whereabouts of the JETs. With the phone networks down, it was an almost impossible task, although he was able to check some via their Facebook updates.
It took more than a week to reach around a dozen teachers in coastal schools, who were out of contact until the Self-Defense Forces brought satellite phones to the evacuation centers they had taken refuge in. One Miyagi JET, Taylor Anderson, 24, was later found to have died, swallowed by the tsunami on her way home from school in Ishinomaki.
“It was the 22nd when they actually found her body, the day before her father and her boyfriend were going to come and look for her,” says Peek, 24. “I was a friend of hers.”
As a prefectural adviser, Peek worked long hours coordinating the search for his friend and acting as translator and mediator between embassies, teachers and the media. Living at the office was more convenient than being at home, because his colleagues would bring in food from home that he was too busy to find himself.
The teachers were struggling to get by without basic amenities. Stormonth, who had to stay at his supervisor’s house, says it was a week before he could wash himself. He had to heat the water with a portable gas stove.
Doherty, who found that due to the stress she was going to bed at 9 p.m. every night and waking early every morning, remembers lining for up to three hours to buy water at a convenience store.
Amid the daily inconveniences, there was also fear. Ninety kilometers away, the nuclear plant was spinning out of control, with three hydrogen explosions shattering the container buildings of the reactors and spraying radioactive material into the atmosphere. A paucity of accurate information about the potential health risks, compounded by the near hysterical mood of parts of the foreign press and worried families back home, created a sense of panic.
“I started freaking out two days before I left,” says Stormonth. Price says: “My teacher told me, ‘Tomorrow, when you come to school, it’s going to be rain. Acid rain. If it touches your skin, it will burn you.’”
The contrast between the calm of much of the domestic media and the hype by some foreign outlets made it difficult to judge what was going on.
“The foreign media was panicking, and at no point did I get the feeling the Japanese media were telling us everything we needed to know, and at no point did I get the feeling they actually knew what it meant. We just didn’t know what to do,” says Levine.
Many JETs in the area felt a sense of obligation to stay out of solidarity with their schools and communities, according to Peek. Doherty says she didn’t want to leave while other teachers remained.
But the onslaught of e-mails from concerned relatives and friends convinced some to leave. “I got these private messages saying, ‘You know you’re not going to be able to have children, right?’ ” says Stormonth. Greb and Levine, who are married, already had tickets booked back to the United States for a vacation, and just extended their stay.
Doherty’s family booked her a ticket, while Price, who had been working at her school daily to clean up damage from the quake, took up the British Embassy’s offer of a free flight home. She said she had been thinking of going back for spring break anyway.
Stormonth, who ended up in Osaka, was disgusted at the Canadian Embassy’s response, saying no one at the embassy in Tokyo could give him any advice.
“They were nowhere to be seen. They said the police would give out (iodine tablets) when it was necessary,” he says, “I was furious.”
Peek was so caught up in his duties that he didn’t even consider leaving until his parents inquired about his contingency plan.
“It was definitely the most stressful event ever, and I didn’t really recognize what was going on with me until my parents started to talk to me about the Fukushima plant,” he says.
The others describe the sense of dislocation they felt when they returned home to their families.
Greb says she was so shell-shocked that she gave monosyllabic answers when people inquired about the disaster. Doherty was riled by the surreal normality of life back home--and, like the others, was desperate to get back and see her pupils graduate before the new term started.
“I’m sad that I missed graduation, but I did get back for the big aftershock,” she says. “My microwave was lying in my doorway.”
Although it was a changed landscape that they returned to, all were glad to be back. On the whole, their schools and friends welcomed them back--but the reaction was somewhat mixed.
“Some Japanese thank you for coming back, but some are kind of resentful for the fact that you even left,” says Price. Some of the foreign community also turned on those who left, calling them “flyjin,” a snarky play on “gaijin,” the Japanese word for foreigner.
“To be fair though, some (teachers) did just run and not call their schools or anything,” Price says.
Levine and Greb toyed with the idea of not returning to Japan while in the United States, “There was a lot of questioning about why we were in Japan, what do we love about it, and what do our obligations mean? If we don’t intend to stay here until we die, what difference does it make if we go home now or we don’t return? But I just love it here, and to leave under those circumstances, an extremely stressful crisis, just felt wrong,” Levine says.
Two JETs from Miyagi did not come back, but those who did felt a renewed affection for Japan and motivation for being here upon their return, according to Peek, who says that he noticed many becoming more engaged with their local communities than before. Several have volunteered with the post-tsunami clean-up or taken part in charity drives.
“Obviously there are going to be issues with trauma and emotions, but (the teachers) went with the Japanese way of ‘OK, this has happened, now we’re going to try and deal with it,’ ” says Peek.
Now, life is all but back to normal.
“I don’t get out of bed for anything less than a M7.0 earthquake,” says Stormonth, smiling. “Radiation is the only thing that still affects daily life, but you can’t walk around thinking that you’re going to get brain cancer in a few years because you stayed in Sendai.”
Although the past year has gone way beyond the adventure that they might have envisioned coming to Japan, it has also shown them a side of Japan that has impressed them.
“Seeing the level of the local community and the outside community was really inspiring,” says Peek. “Over Golden Week (in last May) they actually had to close the volunteer centers. Now, when you meet anyone from Miyagi, you feel you have a kind of connection with them.”
“It used to be, ‘Oh, you’re a foreigner,’ but now they ask, ‘Were you here during the earthquake?’ ”