The next few days consisted of going to the temporary housings to cheer up the people who lived there.

This is what one of the houses looked like from the inside. It is very small and simple.

These people in the picture lost their homes and all of their belongings to the tsunami. Some even lost their beloved family members. While having a small “party” to cheer them up, Issei was able to hear about their first hand experiences with the tsunami. One woman said, “I still have nightmares about it even today. The tsunami came without any warnings and took away everything. I had to live for weeks on without knowing if I will have food for the day. Have you ever experienced this feeling?”

Some of the food that another volunteer bought

Issei with the other residents

Letters of encouragement from the Singapore Sport School

Someone’s cat resting on the front porch

Here is a picture of the temporary housing from the outside. As you can see it really is not that big.

After that, Issei went to go clean up pictures that were discovered in the debris of the tsunami. Along the way, he passed through Yamada Town. Here are some pictures of the town after 9 months:





After about 30 minutes of driving, Issei reached Ootsuchi Town where the picture cleaning took place. This town suffered severe damaged because it was located right on the coast.

As mentioned earlier, the cleaning took place at a school’s gymnasium.

According to a few people, a middle school graduation ceremony was scheduled on March 11th of 2011. It was supposed to take place in this gym, but ended up being cancelled due to the tsunami. On the right side of the banner are words that roughly read, “welcoming the greatest moments in our lives.” as you can see, the tsunami completely uprooted the floor of this gymnasium.

As for the cleaning, Issei had to gather the photos and remove the dirt that was sometimes stuck to the photos. The dirt, which was mixed with many other impurities was toxic, which meant that he had to wear masks and gloves at all times.

After cleaning, Issei had to organize the photos into albums that were then filed away so that their owners could eventually come and pick them up.

The photo cleaning and organizing team

Afterwards, Issei went on a bus and took a drive around the town.

Even in this situation, the buses were operating and the kids continued to go to school.

Here are a few more pictures of Otsuchi town

This used to be a railroad track for the train station. Sadly, it was completely destroyed.

Here is a man hanging salmon to dry.

Here are pictures of the whole town, taken from a small hill

As you can see, there are many graves dug into this hill. Although the ones in the picture were high enough to avoid confrontation with the tsunami, the ones at the bottom were not as fortunate and were destroyed.