ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Mika Ebe used to work in a processing company office, but now she is helping to pick up the pieces at Ishinomaki Fishing Port in Miyagi Prefecture, following the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, which means cleaning up five tons of rotting fish and processed foods.
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Mika Ebe used to work in a processing company office, but now she is helping to pick up the pieces at Ishinomaki Fishing Port in Miyagi Prefecture, following the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, which means cleaning up five tons of rotting fish and processed foods.
"The stench is awful, but I would rather get involved than just wait around for things to recover," says Ebe, 26, who found herself out of a job after the ensuing tsunami battered local processing firms.
Her house remains without hot water, so she has to wash away the lingering smell from her work using cold water. She hopes to return to her company one day.
Today, the fishing wharf at Ishinomaki city's Sakanamachi district is littered with cargo thrown from truck boxes. The stench is overpowering and swarms of black-tailed gulls circle overhead. They have come to feed on seafood such as raw saury, squid and flounder, spilled from the refrigerated storehouses of devastated seafood processing plants.
Using tools or bare hands, dozens of workers separate the refuse into plastic bags or polystyrene and cardboard boxes. In April a plan was announced to dump the raw fish into the sea, but the product packaging has to be separated and disposed of as garbage. The work has been ongoing since April.
Yasuko Mori, 62, lost her job after working on the factory floor of a processing plant for many years. Mori is philosophical about the cleanup work, saying, "I am used to the smell, but it really stinks. Still, in the old days they used to call this 'the smell of money.' "
Takeshi Miura, 45, executive director of Ishinomaki Reizo, a refrigeration company located near the port, looks despondent when he reveals that his company still has 700 tons of produce rotting in cold storage. The company's refrigerated warehouses were destroyed in the tsunami, causing 2 billion yen ($24.96 million) in damage to produce that Miura's firm was storing for other companies. Miura is unsure as to whether his company will be able to continue operating in the same place.
According to Tokyo Shoko Research's Tohoku branch, 67 percent of all businesses with head offices in Ishinomaki city (1,749 companies in total) suffered water damage from the tsunami. There are fears that up to 18,000 people could find themselves jobless. After the disaster, the area's main marine products processing firms set up a "Marine Products Reconstruction Conference" to kick off recovery efforts. The cleanup operations are a kind of public works project, with each participant receiving a "consolation payment," a valuable lifeline for many.
"The rotting produce in the warehouses is blocking recovery efforts. If companies receive subsidies in the form of compensation for discarded produce, this can be used to fund the reconstruction," says Ikuyo Koike, 56, president of a marine produce company and the man in charge of product disposal for the Marine Products Reconstruction Conference.
The cleanup work is expected to continue through the second half of June. Kunio Sunou, president of the Ishinomaki fish market and deputy leader of the Marine Products Reconstruction Conference, says "The marine products processing sector is the backbone of the fishing industry, so if we don't resume operations, there will be no recovery in Ishinomaki. But I am sure that the combined forces of the area's business leaders will be enough to drive things forward."