Post a Comment On: ehewlett

It was dark when I was shaken awake by the quake. I had been in earthquakes before—all in Japan—but this was the first time one had woken me up. "Hmm... This is a big one," I thought, and was just beginning to worry about the ceiling light falling down on me when the earthquake became even bigger. The house shuddered on a low note, sort of a dull, irregular percussion-like roar, and I heard the crashing of things falling to the floor and the splintering of dishes in the kitchen. There was nothing I could do—already my bed was moving around—no time to think—the only thing that I could do, and did, was hold onto my breakdancing, shimmying bed—it might make things a little safer if something fell on me—and pray. "Uh, Lord Jesus, protect me. Keep this house up!" The shaking continued and even intensified, as did the crashing and slamming, then it suddenly died away. I clung to my bed for a few moments more, then sat up—
—there are no words to describe my emotions at this point or during the quake: the closest that I can come, I suppose, is awe. I later thought it was like, if there was an emotion bank in my brain, someone reaching over and flipping many, many of the switches full on, one after another in rapid succession, until an overload point was soon reached. Fear was in there, of course, as well as astonishment and amazement and relief, tension, and a little bit of dread, but, surprisingly, there was no fear of death in this strange composite mixture. Faith, not that God would keep me from death, but that He would see to it that it wouldn't matter if I died, or at least that nothing bad would come of it: faith that I hadn't known that I had in me (which rather contributed to the surprise portion of the emotion bank) was what kept that particular fear from the mix. And awe, even the sound of the word, is a very good word to describe the feeling of that feeling overload that I felt as I sat up.
After sitting up (l may have breathed deeply at this point and thought for a moment, "What do I do next?"—I'm not sure, I forget the exact sequence), I reached down by my bed for my glasses. But there was a suitcase in the way, and behind that suitcase was the chest of drawers that I usually kept the full suitcase on: both had fallen and were jammed tightly against my moved bed. I ripped at the fallen suitcase and clothes for a moment, praying my second prayer after the earthquake, "Lord, don't let my glasses be broken," when I remembered the flashlight that I always kept in the left-hand pocket of my ski-jacket, which I remembered I had hung up in the corner of my room. I crawled to the end of the bed and reached out to where my makeshift coat-rack should have been. It wasn't there. I reached down and discovered that my bookshelf had broken and my books were now strewn out over the floor. On a hunch, I burrowed down under the books and felt the thick fabric of my raincoat and, a little further over, the familiar battered padding of my old ski-jacket. I pulled it out, pulled out my flashlight, turned it on (that was better than the scant pre-dawn light now filtering vaguely through my Japanese sliding paper doors), tore the big suitcase out of my way, and rummaged through the fallen clothes on the floor to finally find my unbroken glasses. "Thank you, Lord," was, I think, my sigh of a third prayer, and I think I was including in that my thanks for His protection during the earthquake. Since I had my ski-jacket in hand, I slipped that on, and, pulling a pair of jeans from the pile of spilled clothes that were still on the floor, I quickly changed into those and looked about my suddenly very messy room. I had to get out of there, I knew, but, I thought, if I had to get out of there, I might as well get out of there fully-clothed and prepared for the elements. Besides, I thought, if an aftershock comes it won't be as big as the first quake, and if this house and bed could keep me safe during that wild first quake, they would surely be almost as safe as anywhere else if there was an aftershock. I think an aftershock did come somewhere during this time, but I simply held on again to my bed and prayed some more—if I remember correctly.
My room, as I said before, was a complete mess. I have had my room messy before (the worst was when I didn't clean up for the entire three months of my junior high school teaching practicum), but it had never before been quite so bad as all this. My chest of drawers, as I said before, had fallen over. bringing down with it both my suitcase full of clothes and the extra sliding glass doors that I had seen fit to store behind it. One of the doors was broken (I was suprised that the rest of them weren't), so there was glass on the floor in that direction. One whole wall of my room is sliding light wooden doors: three of those four doors had fallen over into my roommate Tim's room. Another whole wall is sliding light paper doors, behind which is a large storage closet. This whole wall of doors, as well as the contents that had been stored behind them, had fallen forward to lie against the foot of my bed and on the floor beside it, while most of the rest of my once-empty floor-space was now covered with the contents of the aforementioned torn-apart pasteboard bookcase. And I had only just cleaned my entire room for the New Year! (Though that thought didn't loom large in my thoughts at the time.)
I climbed over the fallen books and paper closet doors, slid open my bedroom door (it opened easily, thank God), and stepped out into the hallway. The hallway was clean—there was nothing in it to fall down—but the kitchen was a disaster area. There was glass and broken dishes on the floor, most of the contents of the cupboards had come out to unevenly carpet the floor and the countertop in small piles, and the refrigerator had fallen against the table and lay tilted crazily open right across my glass- and debris-strewn path to the stairway. But the strangest part of this whole crazy scene was the cupboards: though all the debris on the floor had come out of them, every one of them had been neatly re-closed by the earthquake. I stretched my way carefully around the half-fallen refrigerator to step on a relatively safe-looking instant rice-curry box, then stretched my way from it to the stairway and descended.
The stairway was littered with the plants, dirt, and planters that had once decorated it from a wall-ledge for the people ascending. I picked my way down through the mess with the help of my flashlight and the weak, predawn light from the stair and kitchen, hoping that the stuff that I felt through my socks was nothing more dangerous than planter dirt. At the bottom of the stairs there was an ice-cube tray from the upstairs refrigerator-freezer.
I knew from an earthquake-preparation book that I had read (in the Real Canadian Superstore, but hadn't bought it—and even if I had I wouldn't have taken it with me to Japan: everyone told me that there weren't any big earthquakes in the Kobe/Kyoto/Osaka area that I was going to) that the next thing that I should do was to turn off the gas and the electricity to prevent an explosion. But as I reached the bottom of the stairs I realized that, despite my nine months living here in Japan, I had no idea where the switches were. When a hasty flashlight-search of downstairs revealed nothing more than a fallen pulpit and a broken communion tray (I lived upstairs above a large church), I decided that it would be safer to think about what to do next from outside. Besides, I thought I remembered seeing a gas meter or something in the carport below the church building. 
The scene outside renewed my sense of awe and confirmed that this was indeed a very big earthquake. The cement walk that led to the church entrance-steps was now cracked and broken. From the large rock wall lining the driveway that led down into the church carport, several large boulders had fallen. Beneath the church, where I had thought to look for the gas meter, a very non-reassuring red light was persistently blinking. I shone my flashlight in the light's direction and found that the light's source WAS the gas meter. I decided not to look at it any more closely.
If I was going to think, I thought, I might as well do it clearly. I walked across the road in front of the church noting as I did so that, in several places, it was cracked right across with a crack an inch wide that went right through the pavement and into the earth beneath. In the park on the other side of the road, the ground was split open even wider with many long chasms, some deep and wide enough to swallow my foot past the ankle, but the brick bathroom that I was aiming for and was hoping to use was still standing. I used it, hoping for no severe aftershocks while I went, which there weren't. I then re-crossed the road, noticing even more cracks in it than I had before, including one very wide, uneven one where the ground beneath had been pushed up a few inches. Now then, what to do next?
A few people were up and trying to use the pay phone-booth by the church. I decided that I should get in contact with someone who spoke Japanese (and English) and would know what to do, but thought that, if, for some reason, my attempt to phone them might miscarry, that might leave them even more worried about me than they were before. Pastor Sato's place was the closest place that I knew about, and it was his church: he would know what to do. I thought about biking there, but then figured the cracks might make it dangerous and, besides, I wasn't too eager to go down into the carport to get out my bicycle. I decided to walk.
The bridge that I had to cross was as cracked as the road, and a couple of inches lower than the connecting pavement, but it looked strong enough and it had survived the earthquake, so I sprinted across it, feeling like Indiana Jones and figuring that, if I had enough momentum I might at least be able to jump to safety if the bridge should actually fall away beneath me. But nothing of the sort happened, so I slowed to a fast walk on the other side until I came to my first fallen house.
It had been an old house, even before the quake, and so run-down looking that I had wondered if anyone still lived there. I knew that one of the really old-looking houses in the area was uninhabited; I hoped this one was too. Looking at the pile of rubble that the house now was, and picking my way across the shallowest spot in it—it was strewn right across the road, completely blocking it except to pedestrian traffic—I couldn't imagine anyone who might HAVE been living inside possibly surviving. I don't remember thinking anything else at the time, except that I might have calculated that surely it wasn't worth risking MY life searching through dangerous rubble for someone I wasn't sure even existed. Some neighbours were standing around at the house, but they weren't doing anything and I couldn't speak Japanese, so I went on my way. Later, on another trip past what was left of the house, I noticed personal belongings among the rubble, and later still saw men carry out a shrouded body from the debris, place it in a van, and drive off. But that was all later: at this point I had nothing to guide me except speculation, which I ignored and went on to Sato's.
The rest of the roads to Pastor Sato's apartment were not blocked, just cracked and twisted, but passable—the sidewalks were in a similar state. One more thing stopped me briefly before I reached the apartment, however: a concrete four-story apartment building was leaning crazily, in one solid block. The first-floor parking garage beneath it had given way on one of its corners so that the whole building above it was tilted by what must have been at least a 25-degree angle. There seemed to be no activity in or around the building, but I imagined that, if none of it's inhabitants had been killed instantly, they must all be safe as the three living-stories all seemed to be intact. Still, at the moment there was nothing to do but stop and stare. "Oh, God," I breathed—it was a prayer and not a curse. "Oh, God." I went on.
Pastor Sato and his family were all safe, and their apartment building was undamaged. They had had to rescue one another from beneath some fallen furniture, but otherwise they were all unhurt and not yet quite aware of the full seriousness of the earthquake. I must confess to having some rather uncharitable first thoughts about one of Pastor Sato's questions about the church, after I had mentioned the seriousness of the quake and that many people must have been killed or injured: "Did you see whether the chandelier was OK?"
"No, I didn't. I wasn't too worried about chandeliers at the time."
Later I wondered, was it really right to judge him by his first uninformed response to the earthquake? Perhaps to some extent it was OK: if we take into account our lack of knowledge, our initial, unthinkng response to such things does betray where our heart lies, to a certain extent. In my own case I found out that my faith, which I often question intellectually, is much deeper and a lot more solid than I ever thought. But I also discovered that I am even more self-centred and a lot less self-sacrificing than I ever expected: I certainly acted out a lot less love for other people than I often exhort with my words.
Shortly after I met with Pastor Sato, we went to see if the church and the church English language school buildings were all right. On the way, in front of a collapsed two-storey Japanese house that was now only one storey, we met the other language school teachers, Amy, Barb, and Tim. Tim had been staying with a Japanese family who were friends of his, and as soon as he had found out that they were all right, he had run from their house to the church, to check on me. Like me, he had known that it was bad from the beginning. Unlike me, as he ran he wept upon seeing the collapsed houses and thinking of those killed inside. Later Tim told us that he also stopped and helped a young woman who was standing outside a half-collapsed house almost frantic for her parents inside. With Tim's help, she went in found them and, happily, both of them were OK. When Tim reached the church and found me gone, he assumed that I was unhurt and ran from there to check on the two women teachers. They were also fine, and their building was undamaged, though Barb had cut her hand diving into some glass to get under a table during one of the aftershocks. From there the three of them set out to meet Pastor Sato, which they did (and me), as I said before, in front of collapsed two-storey Japanese house that was now only one storey.
In front of that house we also met a young married couple. From their cries, "Otoh-san! Okaah-san!" we quickly learned that this was their parents' house and that their parents were still trapped inside. But no sound came from inside the house, and there seemed no way in. Eventually the husband started wandering around the house and poking about the rubble as he called, but it seemed rather hopeless. Pastor Sato went on ahead to check on the school and the church, Barb and Amy, who can speak a little, and a lot of Japanese, respectively, stayed around to try and comfort the young wife, and, as there seemed to be little we could do to help, Tim went back to help out his Japanese family, the Furukawas, while I went on to see if I could catch up with Pastor Sato.
The school building was fine, if rather a mess inside—I checked it on the way—but the old house that I knew had been empty before the quake had collapsed. Walls leaned crazily and the old route that I took every day on the way to school seemed strangely distorted, but by far the most horribly when I turned a corner to find my way blocked by the ruins of a house that I had passed, on my way to school every day, well over a hundred times before.
The house though, was not the horrible part, completely blocking the narrow alleyway though it's ruins were. Perched high atop the pile of rubble, crying, his skin grey with dust, was a boy, his legs trapped in his bed beneath a large, merciless wooden roof-beam. Beside him were two men, one of whom I took to be his father, who was kneeling and shouting out into an indistinguishable part of the rubble, "Obaah-san! Obaah-san!" meaning "grandmother". The other was standing helplessly beside the child—if he was doing anything, I didn't notice. As gently and carefully as possible, I began to climb up onto the rubble, hoping I would somehow be able to offer to help. What had that word been, that I'd been studying last Sunday: "taskui"? "tsukau"? No. That was "use", not "help". "Taskuru?" And even if I could rembember it aright, did it mean "help" or "salvation" and how did I use it In a sentence? I got up almost level with the two men—it wasn't hard, and the rubble didn't seem unstable—and as far as "Uh..." with my hands held out when the one I took to be the father waved me away, abruptly, almost angrily. I wanted to explain, "Look, I want to help you," to ask him, "Why are you calling for your grandmother, who is most likely dead, when you're sitting by your son here who is alive and is trapped in the rubble?" to plead with the man, "At least let me help him." But I had no words. It was his house, his family, I was a stranger, a "gaijin", an outsider who might bring the rest of the house down on those trapped inside—I got down from the rubble and walked away. As I approached the cracked footbridge, a gang of Japanese men, probably neighbours, armed with shovels and sticks ran purposefully past me, heading towards the collapsed house I had just left. I hope they helped him. I could do nothing. I walked slowly across the cracked bridge, through the park, to my home in the quake-shaken church.