4A • January 26, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
The schoolchildren who
died in Japan’s tsunami
W
hen schools or public institutions put together a safety
manual, most of the time — usually all the time —
they remain on the shelf. That’s fine, as long as the
shelf is still standing when the Big One hits.
When an earthquake struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the
staff and students of Okawa Elementary School should have
been prepared. The school, on the Japanese Pacific Coast about
200 miles north of Tokyo, followed a manual that should have
told students and staff what to do. The plan should have told
them to evacuate to neighboring high ground, not to a field
standing at sea level.
The event was one of many catastrophic moments in a day
that saw homes and cities destroyed, cars swept into the sea and
the catastrophic failure of the nuclear power plant in Fukushi-
ma. Roughly
18,500 people
perished in the
CANNON SHOTS
tsunami, but only
R.J.
MARX
75 children died
while at school.
Seventy-four of
them died at Okawa
Elementary School.
“Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster
Zone,” focuses on the lives of those who survived and those
who did not.
Author Richard Lloyd Parry traces the path of parents as
they painstaking dig through remains, day after day for months
and sometimes even years searching for any remnant of their
child. The author follows a long and tangled web of bureaucracy
designed to deflect public responsibility. And it considers the
human toll in a deeply spiritual land where ghosts inhabit the
landscape as surely as the living.
‘O-tsunami’
The shaking began at 2:46 p.m.
In Tokyo, where the author lived, the vibrations lasted for
six minutes. “The chinking of the blinds, the buzzing of the
glass, and the deep rocking motion generated an atmosphere of
dreamlike unreality,” Parry writes.
In Okawa, the “shaking was so strong I couldn’t stand up,”
one mother recalled. “Even outside, crouching down, we were
almost all falling over.”
Electric lines swayed — “It was as if the whole world was
collapsing.”
Then came the tsunami warnings. While power was out,
trucks drove throughout the region blasting tsunami alerts. An
“O-tsunami,” translated as “super tsunami,” was headed toward
Onagawa, a fishing port to the south.
The concrete elementary school was immediately in front
of a 700-foot hill. Two hundred people, locals and children,
sheltered in the school, cut off and awaiting rescue.
For most, rescue never came.
Two days later, the school was “cocooned in a spiky, an-
gular mesh of interlocking fragments, large and small” — tree
trunks, the joists of houses, boats, beds, bicycles, sheds and
refrigerators.
Buildings nearby “had ceased to exist.”
“Everything had disappeared,” recalled a survivor. “It was as
if an atomic bomb had fallen.”
At the school, it was a scene of tragedy. The road and the
houses were “washed from the earth.”
“What stays in my memory,” a local resident told Parry, “is
pine trees and the legs and arms of children sticking out from
under the mud and the rubbish.”
Of the elementary school’s 108 children, 78 were there at
the moment of the tsunami. Seventy-four of those died; 10 of 11
teachers perished.
“Ghosts of the Tsunami” traces the devastation inflicted by
the tsunami — its human toll foremost — the search for survi-
FARRAR STRAUSS GIROUX
Richard Lloyd
Parry, author of
“Ghosts of the
Tsunami.”
EVE MARX/FOR CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Basil gets a fresh look thanks to Trish Dickerson.
FARRAR STRAUSS GIROUX
vors and painstaking and thankless task of identifying victims.
“No one was just looking for his own friends or grandchil-
dren,” wrote a survivor. “We were pulling everyone out, whoev-
er they were. Every man was weeping as he worked.”
The question survivors of the family wondered: What had
been going on at the school in the period between the earth-
quake and the wave? Why didn’t students and staff run to the
hill nearby? Why did they have to die?
Court case
In a country where such lawsuits are uncommon, 19 families
brought their case to the Sendai District Court. In an 87-page
final judgment, the court surveyed in detail the actions taken by
the teachers and found no fault in their behavior immediately af-
ter the quake. But when tsunami warnings blared, “the teachers
could have foreseen the coming of a huge tsunami to Okawa
Elementary School,” the court wrote.
During the subsequent trial, inadequacies in the school’s
evacuation plan were uncovered.
The place of evacuation chosen was inappropriate and ad-
ministrators unprepared. Despite the screams of older children
who knew the risks of the tsunami, teachers kept children on flat
land rather than releasing them to a nearby unobstructed hill.
Only those few children who fled to higher ground survived.
Those who didn’t were slaughtered in the wave.
“Teachers at the school were psychologically unable to
accept that they were facing imminent danger,” the court found.
It concluded that the deaths arose because the evacuation of
the playground was delayed. Children and teachers eventually
fled toward the tsunami, not away from it.
The Okawa parents won a $13.4 million settlement. It was a
gratifying moment for the families but a hollow victory.
“All their children were still dead,” writes Parry.
Facing disaster
If Japan is “the safest place you could hope to be” after an
earthquake, according to Parry, what could happen here?
Fifty-four percent of those who perished as a result of the
Japanese tsunami of 2011 were age 65 and older, “and the older
you were, the worse your chances,” Parry writes.
How can we take safety measures that address the needs of
children in classrooms, but the elderly, the physically chal-
lenged and the thousands of coastal visitors?
“Ghosts of the Tsunami” is an important read for those of
us considering not only the need for tsunami protections, but to
meet the human — psychic and spiritual — needs in a disaster’s
aftermath.
“Over the months, I’d become accustomed to hearing the
stories of survivors,” relates Taio Kaneta, a Buddhist priest,
in the book’s concluding pages. “But all of a sudden, I found
myself listening to the voices of the dead.”
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Okawa Elementary School, one year after the March 11 tsunami. Officials preserved the shell of the school in 2017 as a
remembrance.
Basil gets a haircut
O
ur old dog, Basil, who is not our oldest dog (that
would be Rinaldo), was in desperate need of
professional grooming. I’d been doing him myself
(bad idea) for awhile, as he was too much of a basket
case for the first groomer I tried when we moved here.
A few years ago we relocated from the east coast where
Basil was well attended to by Lynda, who worked at a
boutique grooming shop in Bedford Hills, New York, called
Pawfection.
Lynda was savvy to all of Basil’s quirks, quirks he has be-
cause he was born crippled. His two front legs are hopelessly
twisted, and his left foot is almost on backwards.
He’s about 13 years old now and he can handle short
walks; he can do stairs, but he doesn’t like them. The main
thing is he’s in some degree of pain at all times, which
makes grooming him a nightmare. He can tolerate clipper
work only on his torso, which means the rest of him has
to be laboriously hand-scissored. I don’t hold it against his
first groomer on the coast at all for subtly rejecting him as
a client. She and I
remain good friends
and I know she ad- VIEW FROM
mires Basil’s brave THE PORCH
attitude, as well as
EVE MARX
my devotion.
So imagine my
joy discovering The
Sandy Dog, a mobile groomer out of Seaside. Trish is profes-
sionally trained to groom dogs and worked for a national pet
services corporation before going out on her own last year.
Because Basil is nervous, I asked permission to stay with
him while Trish did her work. Basil takes forever to groom,
so we had plenty of time to gab while she combed him out,
de-matted the areas he’s reluctant for me to touch, bathing
him, blow drying him, applying the clippers for a one-half-
inch “‘puppy cut.” I was amazed she was able to get him
completely finished, deftly hand scissoring his feet and
twisted legs, making his ears and face at my request look, as
much as possible, like a teddy bear.
“My husband’s nickname for him is ‘Cubby,’” I said.
Basil is named for my father, who by day was a lawyer,
but was also a partner in a record company. He was a com-
poser who played piano; he also owned a couple of movie
theaters, but that’s another story. The dog Basil is quite
musical. He’s a jazz fan who howls enthusiastically along to
my husband’s saxophone. His favorite song is “Sugar” by
Stanley Turrentine.
Basil’s been groomed by The Sandy Dog twice, and I’m
optimistic the day is coming when Trish will pull up with her
trailer and I can just bring Basil out. He trusts her more each
time. I’m aware even when they’re not born crippled, Lhasa
Apso’s are not the easiest grooming clients. They’re small
but they can be snippy. Basil has the face of an angel, but
let’s face it, a bite is a bite.
The Sandy Dog (503-440-9279) is owned and operated
by Trish Dickerson, a Seaside native. Trish is fun to talk to
and she’s a really good groomer. She loves dogs and her
work and she is very patient. And she comes to your house.
Seriously, what could be better?
York’s saga an underreported chapter of Lewis & Clark story
Y
ork is not a household name,
except perhaps to Pacific
Northwest history buffs.
He was the black slave who ac-
companied his master, William Clark,
on the 28-month trek to explore the
Louisiana Territory and find a direct
water route across the American
landmass.
We know of him in fragments,
through the writings of Clark and
others, but we have nothing of York’s
first-person account. (He, like several
Corps of Discovery members, was
illiterate.) What did the Lewis and
Clark Expedition look like to him?
We cannot know for sure, but we can
put forth an educated guess.
That’s the focus of a one-man
show written and performed by Gide-
on For-mukwai, a local author and
storyteller originally from Cameroon,
a French-speaking country in Central
Africa. For-mukwai recently pre-
miered his dramatized interpretation
of the overland journey — as seen
Publisher
Kari Borgen
Editor
R.J. Marx
Circulation
Manager
Jeremy Feldman
Production
Manager
John D. Bruijn
GUEST COLUMN
ERICK BENGEL
through York’s eyes — at Manzani-
ta’s Hoffman Center for the Arts.
By telling York’s underreported
story, what he calls a “well-kept
American secret,” For-mukwai hopes
the show will inspire viewers to spot-
light the “unsung heroes” in our midst
— the people whose work, done dil-
igently and with quiet dignity, makes
our society possible, but whose
contributions are often ignored.
York is a fascinating figure, and
not just because he was the only
African-American on the trip. He was
allowed to hunt with a firearm and
savor a certain measure of freedom
across the Continental Divide and
back, even while technically en-
slaved. He was a man at the center of
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Danielle Fisher
Staff writer
Brenna Visser
Contributing
writers
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Nancy McCarthy
sweeping historical events, yet denied
his due glory and largely consigned to
a footnote. (In this, of course, York is
far from unique.)
We know York had a wife and was
newly married when he set off with
Lewis and Clark. We know he helped
the expedition engage peacefully with
native tribes. When the time came to
decide whether the Corps would win-
ter on the Columbia River’s north or
south side, York’s opinion was noted
(along with that of their Shoshone
guide, Sacajawea).
We also know that, when the troop
returned from the Columbia-Pacif-
ic, York was not given the honors,
acreage and double pay awarded
to his Corps comrades. Instead, he
remained Clark’s property, his name
— a one-word identifier like that of
“a dog or a pony” — ranked near
the bottom of the team members,
For-mukwai said.
Clark later told the writer Wash-
ington Irving (in a disputed account)
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that he eventually freed York about
a decade after they returned. York
allegedly went into business for him-
self, failed at it, then tried to reunite
with Clark before dying of cholera.
There is no evidence that he ever
found his wife.
Between the lines of this sec-
ondhand sketch, a private drama is
playing out in the soul of someone
whose inner character is lost to us. So
we are left with questions. What did
pride, self-respect and heroism mean
to York, who could only experience
them in a state of bondage?
The data is sparse; we are forced
to read into the narrative gaps. But we
can certainly surmise what York felt.
When his master did not free him
after the expedition, York apparently
became self-destructive. Clark would
allow York to leave for a few days,
and the slave would be gone much
longer, For-mukwai said. Clark wrote
to his brother that he punished York
for his behavior.
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The York who came home is “not
the same York who went on the expe-
dition,” For-mukwai observed. Some
scholars believe that, after York spent
more than two years feeling liberated,
the idea of remaining subjugated was
simply intolerable.
The history of westward expan-
sion is shot through with casual inhu-
manity, darkening even the celebrated
Lewis and Clark story. Between the
adventurous highlights — in the un-
documented silence where we can in-
fer the screams — lies pain unvoiced
and persecution unatoned.
For-mukwai said we should find
a way to acknowledge what each of
us brings to the world, including and
especially the people low in the social
strata. For though institutional slavery
is over, there are modern-day Yorks,
living somewhere between freedom
and captivity, waiting for their stories
to be told.
Erick Bengel is the editor of Coast
Weekend.
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