Due to the generous support of the Reischauer Institute

Due to the generous support of the Reischauer Institute, I was able to volunteer in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture through All Hands Volunteers. In this report, I hope to describe my experience and provide some insight as to how nonprofits, the Reischauer Institute, and future interns/volunteers can continue to support the recovery effort. I arrived in Ofunato during matsuri season. Coming from my language program in Hokkaido, I took a shinkansen from Hakodate to Sendai, where I was greeted with many decorations. I was very fortunate to meet a returning All Hands volunteer while waiting for my bus to Ofunato. On the ride there, I saw overturned fishing boats on heaps of rubble on slopes of mountains. Much remains to be done. Toby, the returning volunteer (coincidentally, also a Harvard Business School applicant) informed me that All Hands organizes anywhere from 50 to 100 volunteers on a daily basis; the numbers swell when their partner, Habitat for Humanity, brings in college students from Tokyo. They coordinate everything through daily meetings. The meetings include the introduction of new volunteers, reports from project team leaders, general announcements, farewells from departing volunteers, and finally descriptions of and sign-ups for the next day’s activities. Thus mentally prepared, I entered the All Hands Sakari base. Instead of interrupting dinner, which would have been the case on any other day, I walked into a party. It was the tanabata. The females were putting the final touches on their yukata and the men lounged around with cases of Asahi. The volunteer coordinator, also named Toby, handing me his own drink, told me that the “first order of business is to have some beer” because we would “deal with the serious stuff tomorrow”. In addition to their ongoing projects, All Hands had been extra busy the past week with tanabata preparations: making lanterns, fixing floats, putting up decorations. And so I arrived as the volunteers enjoyed the fruits of their labor—a welcome sake-fueled respite from routine. Because of this, I had a slow start actually getting to work. The next morning, I signed waiver forms, got a tour of the base, and, having missed the fieldwork sign-ups, was given the task of housekeeping instead—which was perfectly fine with me, as I don''t think I could have handled jumping into hard labor immediately. Tanabata activities continued in the afternoon. This consisted largely of a parade rehearsal. Not only did I get to help pull a float, I got to ride on top of it—a huge honor. During the breaks, the kind parade organizers showered us with beverages and snacks. (I have now become very fond of Papico.) After the rehearsal, we were whisked to a generous dinner at the organizer’s house. Then, the parade began in earnest. After several hours of pulling the float and chanting, we were once again taken to a feast, which was delicious but threatened to last until the wee hours of the morning. This would not do—we all had to get back to work in the morning. Satoshi, the project director, managed to get us out at a reasonable hour after some delicate, Japanese-style, passive-aggressive negotiation. The first couple of days were thus a blur of Japanese hospitality and festival music. But once work started, I quickly fell into the All Hands rhythm. Because I have some Japanese, I was designated a translator, which meant I could get first picks for assignments. I ended up getting both breadth and depth: I shoveled insulation foam (debris from a ruined factory) for two days, cleaned salvaged photos for four, gutted a house for one, and cleared a river bank in preparation for toro nagashi for three. Shoveling insulation foam was very kitsui, very physically taxing. After a summer in cool and temperate Hakodate, I was not used to Honshu heat. I combated dehydration by drinking my weight in Pocari Sweat. The factory was in the process of rebuilding—I could see the new building across the street from our mountains of foam. Cleaning salvaged photos was not very physically demanding but quite so mentally. We cleaned them by hand using water. Usually already damaged and very fragile, the photos could be ruined by one wrong touch. We wanted to avoid doing that as much as possible, but sometimes the photos were beyond repair, and we would have to throw them away. It hurt every time we disposed of someone’s precious photo. Two of the four days of my involvement on the project, I worked alongside a local volunteer, who would sometimes recognize people and places in the photos. Gutting the house involved crawling under floorboards to clean out debris that the tsunami had washed under it. Because the owner, Yamaguchi-san, kept asking us to take breaks and consume her generous plates of iced coffee, watermelon, and homemade yogurt, the dirty work was more than bearable. The bulk of the reconstruction would be left for the contractor; our goal was to make it easier (and thus more affordable) for them. Clearing the riverbank was an intense learning experience. It was through this that I learned how to use a weed whacker. It was the first time I had ever operated a power tool. It was also when I learned that operating power tools is very, very fun. On a more serious note, the riverbank had basically been neglected since the tsunami, and therefore had a wall six feet deep of reeds seven feet tall. We cleared a long stretch of it for the toro nagashi—the people of Ofunato were going to set lanterns on the river to commemorate those lost in the tsunami. Naturally, they could not do that with the river blocked by this wall of reeds. While we were working, passersby would talk to us and thank us profusely. I talked to people who were still living in temporary housing and still had loved ones unaccounted for. I wanted to make this riverbank perfect for them. It so happened that the toro nagashi was held on my last night in Ofunato. I was tired from gutting the house earlier that day, but the exhaustion disappeared once I saw the once-overgrown riverbank decorated with lanterns, lined with food stands, and crowded with people. I teared up when a woman thanked me for working on the riverbank clearing effort. She pointed to lantern with her mother’s name on it—she had lost her mother in the tsunami. I will never forget that. All Hands Volunteers definitely has a positive relationship with the community. Everywhere we went, people would come out and thank us, sometimes giving us snacks. It is the small and personal nature of the projects that allow this. While I think such a bond is valuable (perhaps invaluable), and I appreciate the work that All Hands is doing, I wonder if the organization could be doing more with its resources. According to Mike, one of the team leaders, much of the work All Hands does is busy work. The shoveling of insulation foam, for example, could be completed much more efficiently if All Hands bought the machinery to do it. I am told it definitely has the resources to do so. All Hands is scheduled to end Project Tohoku at the end of September, but it has more than enough money to continue until the end of the year, if not longer. All Hands had originally planned on focusing on rebuilding houses. However, it seemed to have difficulty negotiating relationships with Japanese contractors. And so it found smaller projects instead—clearing ditches of mud, for example—that, while helpful, do not directly allow people to move out of temporary housing. According to some of the leaders, the inefficiency stems from organizational infrastructure. Decisions are made as one group with members of varying skill sets and experience. While the ideals of openness and inclusiveness are definitely commendable, there are those who think that emplacing a slightly more hierarchical structure would lead to better decision-making. One of the ideas brought up, for example, was assigning volunteers to jobs based on skills and experience and their commitment rather than having them sign up for them. (They sort of have this system in place in regards to Japanese-speakers, but do not ask about other skills.) One of the coordinators, at the request of the project director, had created a computer program collecting and assessing this data, but the group decided against it in the spirit of giving everyone a chance to explore all the projects. That said, disaster relief presents unique challenges. The fact that All Hands accepts volunteers with no experience and differing levels of commitment makes coordinating projects even more challenging. However, daily operations seemed to run quite smoothly. I always felt welcomed and taken care of. I admit that I do not know enough about nonprofits, management, and disaster relief to provide significant, concrete analysis about the situation, but I do think that Ofunato would benefit if All Hands could figure out a different way of using the generous resources at their disposal. It is a question that involves deep thought the organization’s goals, which at the moment seem kind of nebulous. Indeed, All Hands is reconsidering the project end date. Perhaps it would be helpful for volunteer organizations to work with research institutes to create a detailed relief plan, combining the grassroots volunteer know-how with academic expertise on Japanese culture, political economy, architecture, etc. Similarly, future interns/volunteers can continue to support the Tohoku region by doing proper mental and physical preparations. Living in a communal environment in a foreign land can be exhausting—and especially after a long day of hard work, people can get tense. While everyone was generally accommodating and easy-going, I did witness some small spats between volunteers over personal space and food portions. I suppose perfect harmony is impossible, but some patience and an open mind goes a long way. Equally important to being mindful of others is being mindful of yourself. Especially for people not used to hard physical labor outdoors, it is easy to overwork yourself. Knowing your limits is very important. In their enthusiasm, some volunteers ended up getting heatstroke, injuries, and otherwise ill. So I would recommend that people take frequent breaks, drink lots of water, eat properly, and sleep well. When I started volunteering, I was wished an experience beneficial for both myself and Ofunato. As for the latter, my contribution can be quantified by debris cleared, photos cleaned, and weeds whacked. What I gained in return, however, is immeasurable. I hope to put my knowledge to use as I continue to support the recovery effort.