Our Trip to Tohoku: Ishinomaki (Part 2)

A fallen advertisement.

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According to Wikipedia, Ishinomaki is the town most badly affected by the tsunami.  It certainly was bad, but I am not sure if it is the most badly affected. I thought Rikuzentakata had it very bad, it was pretty much entirely wiped out. 

We went up a hillside that looks down into town. The right side of a canal/river was completely wiped out whereas the left side was damaged but not wiped out. The picture above was taken on the left side.  The picture below is of the right side.  Only a few buildings left standing.

And here is a close up of the right side.

As you know, many houses were badly damaged after the tsunami. So even if it had not floated away, it was pretty much a goner and uninhabitable. There was a system where if the owner of that house wanted the army/volunteers to help break down the house for disposal, they would put a special marking on the side of the house. When we drove through the tsunami-area, we saw some really battered houses, definitely uninhabitable, but they were not removed although the buildings in the surrounding area have been removed. I am told that for such houses, what it means is that the owner/family of that house entirely perished. There is no one around to put any marking. And without such marking, the government cannot demolish what is left standing. Here is a close-up of a badly damaged house that is still not yet demolished.

The primary school in this town was the most badly affected of all schools in the tsunami. The school was completely destroyed. The kids and teachers were evacuating when they were swept away by a 2nd tsunami wave, killing 75 of the 108 students and 10 of the 13 teachers. Below is a picture of this primary school.

What I thought was really eerie about this school is that its frontage is a graveyard.  Both the right and left of the road leading up to the school was all tombstones. And these tombstones were also badly damaged by the tsunami. See photo below.

The hill I mentioned is behind this school.  When the towns people ran up the only 2 staircases leading up the hill. It caused a bottleneck and not everyone managed to make it up. This is the one of the staircases, below.

How bad was the tsunami here? According to Wikipedia, it reached 10m high and travelled 600 m inland. Approximately 29,000 residents lost their homes.  All pretty heartbreaking stuff.

The earthquake shifted this city southeast and downwards, by as much as 1.2 metres in some areas.  The picture below is of the jetty which used to be above water pre-earthquake. It is now submerged in water due to the earthquake causing the land here to sink.

 

Comments

[Cecilia]

It's great to see people going up there.
I was in Rikuzen Takada in Sept.for a week and there is no town centre anymore. Nothing.. all gone.
The big difference with Ishinomaki & RT is the size of the place at the outset. RT population was not much more than 20,000. Ishinomaki would be close to 10 times that. RT destruction was almost certainly more complete, but the scale of damage in a city so much bigger makes everything so much more difficult - from getting getting basic services, to developing a "community spirit" to getting agreement about future plans, relocating kids into schools etc etc etc.

I'd love to see a 'tourism for reviving the regions' campaign in Japan.

[Heidi]

Hi Cecilia, I totally agree with you on tourism for that area. We drove around Iwate and it is beautiful. I loved it and had a fleeting thought about just ditching Tokyo and living the simple life in Iwate with our savings. They really should exploit it. Anyway, you read my mind, I was going to close off my posts on the Tohoku trip with one on the beauty of Iwate and how they should encourage tourism there.

[Cecilia]

JR East has been reading your mind - or blog!

[Cecilia]

I forgot the link - you've probably seen them in the stations anyway.
http://www.jr-morioka.com/pamphlet/pdf/201203_iwate/0.html