Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Special Edition - It's Only Common Sense: Not Leaving Japan

The picture below is me with my son, Damon. He is 23 years old and an English teacher in Morioka, Japan. Last May, Damon graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana with a degree in Japanese Studies. Japan, the people, the culture and the language have been his passion since he was a small boy. He started learning Japanese when he was just 15 and has excelled at it ever since.

On Friday March 11, 2001, at 7:16 am, my brother-in-law Gil Smith called me to ask how I was doing. I told him I was fine and asked why he was asking. He then asked if I had turned on the television yet that morning and I send "no," I was working. "Well," he said, "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there are terrible things happening in Japan right now.; I think you'd better check it out." I thanked him and apprehensively turned on the television.

We've now all seen the footage and know it was just horrifying. I saw that Northeast Japan was being hit the hardest with the earthquake and the tsunami. I went to the refrigerator where my wife had hung a small map of Japan with the name "Morioka" written in pencil, and just as I feared, the city was in Northeast Japan. My heart sank. He was right in the middle of it.

The rest of that day was spent trying to reach him. We regularly tried his cell phone, Skype, the land line, texting (yes, we learned how to text), e-mail--whatever we could try we tried it. We, of course, could not get in touch with him. All the while the footage on CNN was getting worse. The more desperate we got the more helpless we felt.

What do you do in a situation like this? Call the police? Call your congressman? You know that although your personal situation is not good, others have it worse. You don't know the extent of the damage. You try not to think of worst-case scenarios. You try to be positive and upbeat, but it's all you can think about. You can only do what you do and just, well, endure and hope for the best.

Let's just say it was a very long day. At one point in the late afternoon I was reduced to lying on my office couch under one of my wife's quilts watching reruns of "Bonanza." I think it was the adult version of sucking your thumb.

My wife, meanwhile, declared a state of normalcy. Her philosophy was a good one: "We've done everything we can for now so let's just be normal. I am going to make dinner like I always do, we'll eat clean up and watch a little non-news TV for a while...like we always do."

And that's what we did. We were watching Jeopardy when we got the call from Gary DeCoker, Director of Earlham's Japanese studies program...

Meanwhile, in his own words, here is what Damon was doing the day of the earthquake:

When the earthquake hit, I was in the teacher's room at my school, Senboku Junior High. I was actually in the middle of writing a text message to a friend, when the phone had switched to a black screen saying "Earthquake" (due to my phone's settings being in English) and information in Japanese on where the earthquake was supposed to be which read 岩手 or "Iwate" the prefecture I currently reside in. Along with the message came a shrill warning alarm from my phone and others, even though most phones are set to silent while at school. Within seconds of the early warning system alarm came the earthquake! I went to the frame of the door into the hallway and stayed there for about a minute until I felt the earthquake stop.

I have to say it was scary, I had just experienced my first "big" earthquake and aftershocks only a few days before on Wednesday (which, I learned later, was a fore shock to Friday's 9.0.) That alone was pretty unnerving, it shook pretty strong and for a long while, but there was no damage or real alarm anywhere in the country.

I knew Friday's quake was pretty bad when I started to see things fall all over the place and the power cut out. Also, the sheer length of it was pretty intense.

The female students were screaming from time to time and the male students were actually jumping around like it was fun. Once it had finally settled, we gathered all of the kids up and took them outside to the front yard of the school and had them line up by school year, class and number. The classroom leaders counted off and made sure everyone was accounted for. Then, year-by-year we had all the students quickly head back into the school and grab their belongings and come back outside. In the meantime, we were already experiencing a series of aftershocks really only evident to us by the flagpole which would sway from time to time. It's actually hard to feel the shaking when you're outside. We started gathering students by what areas they lived in around the town of Senboku and the teachers would walk them to a certain point and then report back in.

Honestly, I have to say that at that time I had no idea how bad it was. Most of the students wanted to joke around when we were outside and accounted for. Many of them kept asking me if this was my first big earthquake and how I felt. A lot of them would tell me that this was nothing to them and almost fun. I think this was a mix of teenage valiance, with the Japanese tendency to take pride in things that seem exclusive to them, as well as their ability to endure hardships with a smile. Overall, I admired these students' boldness and Japanese spirit as it settled my mind at that moment making it seem that this was an earthquake to be only slightly concerned with.

One of my fellow teachers was watching the reports on his phone and showed me a little bit of what was going on. All I was seeing was a warehouse way out on the coast with about three feet of water surrounding it, as well as a tall building somewhere that had a little bit of smoke coming out of it--no big deal. I honestly did not know the impact of a tsunami at this time, plus the warehouse seemed to be in an area far from the residential areas, so, if there were causalities, there would be few.

After all of the students went home, my vice principal took me aside and told me to go home, but to come back immediately if I was unable to get into my apartment.

I went home and saw that the blackout was widespread. I assumed it was intentional to prevent further damage, and, later, I found out it was. When I was in my house I saw that very little of my items had been disturbed, but stuff had definitely moved around. I also realized that the quakes were continuingand that the earth was at a constant tremor. As soon as I replaced a large wooden "Kokeshi" doll, an almost comedic aftershock came and knocked it over once again. I was too frightened to stay inside, so I packed a small bag with a change of clothing, just in case, and set out--just to be outside and explore.

There was a huge blizzard brewing and everyone was outside walking home due to the power outage keeping people from working. It was pretty silent, but crowded. The streets were bumper to bumper from the traffic signals having no power. The convenience stores were still trying their hardest to be open and were selling goods and adding up the totals and inventory manually. I spent about three hours outside just walking, fearing the aftershocks. At one point, I finally made phone contact with one of my friends which was extremely hard to accomplish because of the overcrowded lines. She told me she was okay and gave me a bit of her story. We both didn't know at this point how massive this situation was. I saw the buses were still running and decided to take one home. Of course, they were extremely off schedule, but I managed to catch one, which was very crowded. It took about an hour to get home, where this bus usually takes 10 minutes max.

When I came home, I found a radio that the previous owner of my apartment had left and turned it on immediately. On one of the nationally-broadcast stations had a small English-language report on the incident. All they were really talking about on the report though was how chaotic Tokyo had become with no train service and a little bit about the power plant situation. Otherwise, I wasn't learning about the true gravity of the situation. I switched to one of the local stations and listened in. They were doing a broadcast based on messages people sent in informing others that they were okay. The station was also putting out information about work and school closings. From this report I found out that my school wasn't going to be having the graduation ceremony planned for Saturday. I listened to this broadcast through the night and set out the next morning to my girlfriend's place across town by foot, as the buses weren't running at all. The power was still out into the evening and as soon as it came on we both plugged in our phones to turn on and charge. I was greeted by a flood of messages from within Japan and from the States checking in on me. At that moment, I realized how big of a deal it was and that this was being broadcast internationally. After I sent out a few messages, I turned on the TV via my phone (the TV at her place broke due to the earthquake) and began getting the numbers of lives lost and people without homes. More than 24 hours after the initial quake, we finally knew what was going on in Japan.

Gary DeCoker told us that they had heard that the damage in Morioka was not as bad as in other places, especially places like Sendai. He also told us that because Morioka is 50 kilometers inland they had not been affected at all by the tsunami. He said that he had not heard yet from any of the seven Earlham alums who were teaching in Morioka, but that everyone was advised to let him know the minute there was a communication break.

Obviously, this news calmed us quite a bit. We were starting to feel that Damon was going to be okay.

Later that night, we got another call from Gary letting us know that one of Damon's peers, Lydia had managed to talk to her mother in Chicago using a pay phone and let her know that all Earlham alums including Damon were fine and accounted for.

The next day, Saturday, we finally got through to Damon on the phone and Sunday we got to see him on Skype. He told us that he was fine and planning to go back to work on Tuesday. Things were returning to normal in Morioka and that, except for a shortage of food and power (they are having planned power outages to divert power to the areas that need it the most), everyone was safe.

He was fine, he was safe, we had seen him and we could relax.

Epilogue

Or so we thought. As we all know, throughout the week the threat of nuclear radiation exposure has been steadily increasing in Japan. I have been worried, but, to me, it seemed the news seemed to be more of a debate between pro and anti-nuclear proponents.

On Wednesday night my wife and talked about what we should do. Should we bring him home?

We came to the conclusion that he's not a kid, but a 23-year-old man; he is over there so knows better than we do what's going on and we should leave this decision up to him. We agreed to support what he wanted to do.

That decision seemed fine until I turned on my AOL on Thursday morning and saw that President Obama was urging Americans to get out of Japan. Then, upon going to the Earlham College Web site, I saw that Earlham was evacuating their junior year abroad students and that three out Damon's six peers were already on their way home. And until friends started calling me to advise me to get "get him out of there."

By Thursday evening I was pretty shook up. Should we ask him to leave? What about his contract? What about his safety? What about the fact that we always taught him to finish whatever he started? I decided to call my wife and talk about this some more.

When she answered the phone she said quickly, "Hold on, I've got Damon on Skype and we're just finishing so he can go to work."  I listened to the rest of their conversation:

Debbie: So, Damon, have you thought about leaving at all?

Damon: Absolutely not. Look, these people need help. Its cold here, food is low. Yesterday I gave blood for the first time in my life. I donated some of my clothes and I even donated some money. I am going to stay and help as much as I can. I've been coming here since I was 17 and have friends here and they're in trouble so I'm not running out on them now. Besides, I have another year left on my contract. I have to finish that. No, I'm not going anywhere. I gotta go ma, don't want to be late for work.

And, so, that's the way it is. He is one American who is not leaving. He is going to stay and do his job and try to help as much as he can.

And Debbie and I? Well we'll support that with our pride and with our prayers.

It's only common sense.