Getting to Sendai

20 March 2011

Dear Phyllis,

When I left Chiang Mai I had no idea where I was going in Japan. Tim Cole was trying to get in touch with me, and called Neil asking if he knew anyway he could reach me. He was surprised to hear that I was presently on my way to Japan. I called Tim as soon as I got in Ikoma. In 1988-1989 I had been in Sendai building the Kakudai Senkyo Gauin (Tohoku Bible School). Tim wanted to know about them and how to contact them. There is a large organization, CRASH, that Tim was working with and they wanted to use those facilities as a base. I naturally thought that would probably be the first place I would go, and Tim’s call confirmed that that was to be my first destination.

The Japan Mission truck was just out of shakden (inspection) which meant they had to get it inspected before I could leave Ikoma for Sendai. This put my schedule back a day and a half. Thursday night we finally got the truck loaded and by 9:00PM I was ready to leave. It seemed like the better side of wisdom to get a little rest first, so I slept on a couch at Japan Mission until 2:00AM. After a cup of coffee and some brief devotions, I hit the road with a badly overloaded truck. We had such a terrible load on that small truck that the back tires almost looked like they were square. Until I was able to get some more air in the tires, that truck was waddling so badly all over the road that it felt like I was driving a dolphin. I thought this is going to be a long ride.

Six hours later I got up to Nagano-ken, and drowsiness was starting to get in the red zone. I pulled into a rest area near Matsumoto to rest for half an hour. The snow around Miyoko was higher than the truck, but it had warmed up considerably. That day the sky was beautiful and the roads were clear. By 4:00 in the afternoon I had gotten as far as Niigata City. I was almost out of gas and stopped at a rest area to fill up. I was surprised to see a huge line for fuel pump at the gas station and noticed that the license plates were from all over Japan. It seemed a small army was headed for the disaster area.

 I asked the girl at the highway information desk about what route to take. She recommended a lower one and said everyone was headed that way. That discussion convinced me that I was right in choosing to go further north to Sakata and come into Sendai from the northwest. With all that traffic headed the south route, there would be a major traffic jam. I also knew that the highway was closed to all traffic except emergency vehicles, and you had to have a permit to get in the Sendai area. I didn’t have one, but was sure that going north would be open. That decision proved to be the right one. Except for one area where they were working on the highway, causing an unbelievable traffic jam, the rest of the trip was with very little traffic. I was surprised to discover that from Niigata City on there were absolutely NO gasoline stations open. I had planned on filling up one more time in Sakata, which is on the Japan Sea side. I assumed there would be gas that far, but for the last five hours there wasn’t one gas station open. Fortunately I had several spare gas cans prepared for this emergency and stopped once to put some more in my tank.

Neil Verwey called me on my cell phone around 4:00 asking how far I had got. He told me, “You have many people traveling with you in prayer.” I’m sure that was true. It was a most unusual trip. I told Neil, “All I have to do is drive. Jesus has to do all the rest.” I would like to report that Jesus did an outstanding job.

Tying down and covering a load like that is difficult. I was genuinely surprised how well the load rode. I never had to retie the load once. The tarp stayed basically in place and the Lord had His angles doing everything else. From Niigata on the sky was black. I couldn’t imagine anything but heavy rain. Miraculously the rain never came down on me and everything on the truck was kept perfectly dry.

Because of the truck inspection, the schedule had been delayed a day and a half. Had I gone when I first planned it is doubtful that I would have made it. They had had heavy snow, but it had warmed up considerable when I got there. The roads were wet with melting snow but I had no problem going over mountain passes that would have been closed the day before.

It was 10:00PM when I finally pulled in the parking lot at the Bible school. I had been driving virtually nonstop for 20 hours. My shoulders should have been as tight as a fiddle string, but I felt amazingly rested. I called David Verwey telling him that I had arrived safely. I didn’t want to bother anyone at 10:00PM and planned to sleep in the truck, but Dave called Nagai sensei telling him I was there. Ten minutes later I heard a knocking on the truck window. It was Nagai sensei welcoming me to the school and offering that I sleep on the floor in the office.

Since the completion of the Bible school in 1989, that was the first time I had been back. The school was only 20 km from the epicenter of the Righter 9 earthquake but showed very little sign of damage.

Things had been so hectic since leaving Chiang Mai that I didn’t even know what day it was. They told me that tomorrow was Sunday and they would be having regular worship service. Because of the gas shortage, many people who had to come from a distance were unable to attend, but otherwise it seemed like a very ordinary worship service.

After church I asked Nagai sensei what his plans were for the afternoon. He said he would probably split firewood for their wood stove. I looked at him in stunned disbelief. I had just arrived with a load of supplies and he was going to spend the day splitting firewood. Then he said he had no gas for his car to go anywhere. When I told him I had brought nearly 100 liters of spare gasoline, he said as soon as we could off-load my truck we could go immediately into Sendai to a church he knew.

I was utterly amazed when we drove into Sendai. The city had just experienced one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history. I had been in Kobe when a Righter 7.6 earthquake had flattened that city. Sendai had just been hit with a 9.0 but I saw very little damage. It was hard to believe that the magnitude was stronger than about a 5.0. The people said that everything in the houses was thrown all over, but I haven’t heard of anyone injured and very little property damage.

The church we visited was fine. All the Christians were safe. No one had suffered serious damage except one sister who lost her house. But the pastor told me that he knew other places where the food and supplies I brought were needed. After we unloaded some things, the pastor took us to the tsunami area, less than 1km away.

That was what you saw on TV. A wall of water over 10 meters (34 feet) had cleaned out everything in its path. As far as you could see unto the base of the hills everything was perfectly flat. It looked exactly like Hiroshima. It would be virtually impossible for there to be any survivors after something like that. The only thing to look for was dead bodies. Nagai sensei told me that the Japanese army had been there, and they had taken out all the dead they could find. There were thousands lined up to be identified by relatives, but getting rid of the dead was an enormous problem. Crematoriums were, of course, totally jammed. I don't know what they did with the dead.

But the living – that is the problem.

 I will write more later,

                                                    bill