It was my first time to visit Indonesia and my first time to tag along with an international disaster relief agency to learn more about how to mobilize volunteers in Japan.  An earthquake had hit the area around Jogjakarta and we were traveling to remote villages that had not yet received much help.  As we pulled up in vans filled with tarps, food and supplies, we were greeted by the leaders of the village who thanked us for coming to help them.  This was a Christian village but we were eager to bring help to the Muslim village next to it as well.  However, the village declined our help and told us that they would wait for Islamic Relief to arrive, so we went about unloading the vans and setting up tarps.

In the midst of all of this busy activity, I wandered around with my camera snapping pictures and without realizing it ended up in the neighboring Muslim village.  Suddenly, there was a tap on my shoulder and I saw an elderly woman who was excitedly pointing to the back of a lean-to where her husband was lying in pain on the floor.  It was obvious that he needed help, but I am not a doctor, nor even trained in emergency first-aid.  Without any language ability I tried to explain that I had nothing to offer, when I realized that I did have my own personal first-aid kit.  So with some trouble I gestured for them to take it and the elderly man’s son came and with great tenderness cared for his father’s sores.

It was about three days later when we once again checked in with the Christian village to see how they were doing.  When we arrived we noticed a large group of elderly men in traditional clothing coming from the Muslim village and I asked our translator what was happening.  ”A funeral, I suppose” she replied.  I immediately thought it must be the old man and asked if she would accompany me to say a few words of condolence to his widow and son.  After a short walk we found the son and it turned out that he also happened to be the chief responsible for the village.  I told him that we also shared his loss and that if there was anything that we could do to let us know.  It was at this point that he revealed to me that the other aid groups had never showed up and his village had only about three days food left for 80 people.  I assured him that we were happy to help and then we agreed on a plan to bring the food and tarps that the village needed after dark, so that they could save face from receiving the supplies from a Christian group.

We are all part of larger entities that in some ways define who we are.  We are Americans or Japanese or Indonesian.  We are Christian, Muslim or Buddhist.  We belong to churches or associations or companies.  But beyond all of that we are all human with similar needs, similar hopes and similar problems.  One of the great strengths of volunteers is that we can get past all of the obstacles of culture, religion,  history and nationality and simply speak heart to heart with people.

I am strongly motivated by my Christian faith to help those who are hurting and to share the hope of Jesus Christ with both words and deeds.  But I was surprised by the question of a Japanese man after we had sat together with a Buddhist monk and his family who had served their community during the tsunami.  We had talked about the  ordeal his family had been through and the difficulty that the community still faced and I told him that I would continue to pray for them.  In the car later the Japanese man asked me, “You are Christian, and they are Buddhist…  how can you care for them so much?”  I told him simply, “We are both human.”  We are not defined by our religion, but as being a human being who is both loved by God and loves others with that same love.  The heart of a volunteer is to share this love.

“But I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more.”  Psalm 71:14
2011 was a year of exceptional challenge to the nation and people of Japan with three disasters striking at once on March 11th, leaving almost 20,000 people dead or missing.  CRASH Japan immediately sprang into action helping hundreds of churches and international relief organizations respond to the needs of the survivors.  By mobilizing thousands of volunteers safely and effectively we were able to bring both help and hope to Tohoku in their hour of need.  However, as time passed it became very clear that the most important work that Christians could do to help survivors was to bring eternal hope into a hopeless situation.  As the harsh realities of post-disaster life set in our primary goal became suicide prevention.  In the words of one survivor living in temporary housing, “I had considered taking my own life, but you (Christians) keep coming.”  Our teams have stayed with the survivors, visiting regularly and consistently sharing the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Suicide in Japan is an ongoing disaster with a staggering toll of lost lives that far overshadows the disasters of this past year.  For the last 14 years over 30,000 people in Japan have taken their own lives each year.  At CRASH we have been very concerned that an even greater number of people would see suicide as their only option in the midst of all the grief and uncertainty following the disaster.  But yesterday the government released a very encouraging report.  In 2011 the suicide rate in Japan actually dropped by 3.7% to the lowest level in 14 years!  Even the number of suicides in the affected region of Tohoku decreased compared with the previous year.  The peak suicide season of the new year holiday and one year anniversary is not shown in these figures but the numbers are encouraging none the less.  The patient work of running mobile cafe’s in the temporary housing units, holding child trauma camps and delivering hand-made quilts door to door has allowed our volunteers trained in trauma intervention to touch many lives with hope.  It is difficult to measure prevention, things that did not happen, but we believe that the continuous Christian presence in each town and city affected by the disaster for the last nine months has made an incredible difference and has even saved lives.

God Bless You,
Jonathan Wilson

President
CRASHJapan 

The lone pine still standing out of thousands of trees planted to be a barrier to tsunamis in Rikuzentakata sends a powerful message. It is a message of hope of survival even in the most desperate of times. Each survivor can in some way identify with that tree. Six months from March 11th, life has moved on for much of Japan, and although there has been massive support, the realities of an interrupted life are pressing in hard even as that help begins to wane. Even the valiant pine tree is said to have little chance of survival.

Our mission at CRASH Japan is to bring both help and the hope of Jesus Christ to these people at this crucial time. The next six months will bring the harsh Tohoku winter and there remain great physical needs for people who escaped with nothing, but the most urgent need is for emotional and spiritual care. Thousands will face a winter having lost loved ones, homes and communities, jobs and professions handed down for generations, with no hope for the future. Many will not survive, not from cold or malnutrition but from a broken spirit.

What can we do? We cannot undo the damage. Even cleaning it up is painfully slow, but for the last six months we have been there with them sharing deep sorrows and small joys. It is our passion to continue to be there, but we need your help. We need you to volunteer, to give and to pray for Japan to receive the hope that was expressed so clearly on another tree.

Six years before the Great East Japan Disaster I started a network called CRASH (Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope) to help churches and ministries in Japan respond to disasters by sending volunteers. After years of holding seminars with various mission and church groups and coordinating volunteer teams at quakes, floods and landslides in Japan, we were still completely unprepared for the immensity of the task before us in responding to one of the largest disasters in history.

Looking back over the last five months, I think it is an appropriate time to reflect on what CRASH has done and begin looking towards the future. Our vision is “Serving the local church to bring help and hope through the body of Christ to those in need in Japan.” Our goal during this first relief phase of the disaster was to mobilize thousands of volunteers to serve in Tohoku both safely and effectively. In support of this vision and goal, the following objectives were accomplished.

1. CRASH established broad-based partnerships to coordinate rapid relief in the early weeks of the disaster response.We were able to move very quickly to establish a command center within days of the disaster which became a central hub for many groups to work through.
2. Deployed assessment teams to both bring immediate aid and to assess locations for safe and effective forward bases throughout the entire disaster area.In the early days there was a great urgency to bring relief supplies to those who were in need. Much of this work was done by professionals but as we prepared to send large numbers of volunteers, our assessment teams also took with them relief supplies to distribute.
3. Established a network of bases including five regional bases, a logistics hub and a command center.One of the greatest challenges we face in responding to this disaster is the amazing size of the affected area. In order to effectively reach the entire region we needed to establish five separate regional bases that could manage the disaster in their area as well as a central command center and a logistics hub to support the rest of the operation.
4. Trained and deployed base management teams to ensure the safety and effectiveness of volunteers.As volunteers began arriving from all parts of the globe, the next challenge was ensuring that these relief workers would actually be useful, and not be in danger themselves.
5. Trained and deployed emotional care teams to specialize in meeting the needs of trauma victims.For each region the disaster was different, but whether they experienced the quake, the tsunami, the nuclear evacuation or all three, everyone is in need of hope.
6. Localized child trauma program for Japan and trained and mobilized volunteers to conduct program.We had first started OperationSAFE for the Great Sichuan Earthquake in 2008, and then localized the program for Haiti and Tibet in 2010. Localizing it for Japan turned out to be a much bigger task than we imagined, especially as we were busy coordinating disaster relief at the same time.
7. Partnered with local churches and ministries to support their efforts to meet the needs of their communities with funds and over 1000 volunteers.Every disaster is local. It is very difficult for outsiders to come into a community and do effective work. This is why Christian churches are so important for disaster relief, because every local church becomes a place for effective relief.
8. Coordinated pastoral retreats to bring emotional care and refreshment to pastors and their families.As each church became a relief hub for their communities, pastors and their families experienced incredible stress and exhaustion. CRASH is partnering with other groups to bring these pastors together for rest, encouragement and emotional care.
9. Established a board and incorporated as a general association.From the beginning of the relief effort, CRASH has operated as the relief arm of two national Christian organizations in Japan, the Japan Evangelical Association and the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association. For greater transparency and accountability CRASH has established its own board with members from both associations and has registered as a not for profit general association in Japan.
10. Built systems and team to support long-term response during recovery and development phases.Much was accomplished during the last five months, what we are calling the “relief phase”. But it is becoming very obvious to all of us that the work is far from over. Over the next few months we will be transitioning into the recovery phase, but the foundation has been laid to support ongoing efforts to bring help and hope to Tohoku Japan.

On March 11th, Japan was hit by a terrible earthquake, a terrifying tsunami and then the nightmare of a nuclear meltdown.  As our house shook and we wondered if it would come down around us, what were we most worried about?  Our children.  Like many parents in Tokyo we send our children on the train to a school about an hour away.  As soon as the quake hit phone lines became jammed, cell phones were useless and the trains all stopped.  We had no way to contact our children to know if they were safe!

Between aftershocks we watched the news reports with increasing dread and tried and tried like everyone else to get through to our children on the cell phone.  At the same time I opened my laptop and was amazed to see that twitter and facebook were functioning perfectly with news coming in from all over Japan.  Most curious of all was that although the cell phone lines were full, the DATA lines were still functioning!  We could get facebook and twitter on our phones.

Over the next few hours the school brought the children who had evacuated the building to the athletic field back inside and then one of my son’s friends showed up on facebook.  I quickly asked him if he knew were my son was and if I could talk to him.  It was just a matter of minutes before my son and daughter were brought into the computer lab and we had reestablished contact.  It would be well into the night before we could get them home but at least we knew that they were together and safe.

As we waited Facebook became a place for all of to share information, rejoice over families being reunited, and start to make plans for the coming relief effort.  During the next week we were able to set up a command center and launch the first assessment and relief teams of CRASH Japan largely through constant communication on Facebook even though cell phone networks were spotty, electricity was intermittent, train service was often stopped and gasoline became difficult to obtain.

While Facebook was extremely useful for grassroots volunteer mobilization, Twitter was also helpful as a way to publicize the work of CRASH to a worldwide audience.  However, I have found that over the last four months Facebook has proven itself to be highly effective and Twitter has been harder to keep up with.  I can check Facebook for a few minutes a day and keep updates current.  Also many of the volunteers that we send are also posting pictures and stories of their experience.  I can “like” these stories, and “share” them without having to take time to create content myself.  After four months of organizing volunteer relief efforts, creating content is perhaps the most difficult.

Thank you for all of your support for CRASH and OperationSAFE

Jonathan

Like each town along the coast of Iwate, Ofunato was devastated by the quake and tsunami and much of the population has had to live for the last four month in evacuation shelters.  As temporary housing units become available families move in to them with great excitement to finally have a bit of privacy, but there are still many challenges in front of them.  The units are very small, have only a few appliances provided by the Red Cross and then the families are on their own.  All of the food, medicine, and social support that they have been receiving at the shelters are no longer available to them once they move out.

On this day I joined a team of South African Christians as they joined together with veteran missionary John Elliot of OMF to build basic furniture for these families moving out of the shelters.  The idea was simple, to build a child size table and chair set for families to at least have something to eat off of, study at, and sit on.  But once John started building these sets, the orders started pouring in and it is impossible to keep up with demand.

Once the team was trained and put their energy toward meeting the orders that had already been placed, John and I got to work on a special request.  A single mother with two boys was desperate to have a bunk-bed that would fit in the tiny space of the housing unit.  As we drove up to the units with a van full of tools and wood, others started asking questions.  ”Is this free?  Are you volunteers?  Can you make things for us as well?”  For people with no income and no hope of finding a job these small pieces of furniture were treasures indeed.

Of course the bigger picture is that these coastal fishing towns must be rebuilt and jobs must be restored but how long will that take and what will people do until then?  We are looking at the next step of setting up a small workshop, where we can hire local people who have lost their homes and jobs to build the furniture and then give it away to other evacuees along the coast who have lost everything as well.  It won’t put that many people back to work, but if it can bring hope to a community it will be worth it.

CRASHJAPAN.COM

Three months after the disaster, I finally was able to spend a day actually volunteering instead of coordinating.  I left my house at 5:00am and took the bullet train up to Sendai to connect with one of our volunteer teams who were working at a farm house in Shiogama.  Quite a ways inland, we could see from the line on the walls that the water from the tsunami had still reached well over our heads.  Our CRASH (Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope) teams have been here for weeks already and there is still so much work to be done.  The task before us today was to clean out the black tsunami sludge from a small out-building that was used to make pickles and miso.  The traditional way of preparing these foods is to let them sit in vats until they are ready to eat, letting the flavor become rich and distinctive to each local area.  While we worked, other members of our team sat and listened to the elderly woman who had been born in the house tell of its hundred year history and the shock of losing everything.

After dumping wheelbarrows full of the black, foul smelling sludge we were able to pull out the large vats that were used for making the miso, a spicy paste made from fermented soybeans,  that is used in so many traditional Japanese dishes.  The huge vats had been cemented together by the mud and we held little hope of being able to use them again.

Next came a wooden cabinet that was carefully emptied of all the treasures that it contained, stacks of dishes, various bowls and cups that would be brought out for special occasions to hold all of the pickles, soy sauce and food that would cover the table.  Each mud-caked dish was set aside to be washed by the next team and we pulled the ancient cabinet out.  Next there was a discussion with the owner of the house, should we keep it or throw it away.  The shelves and panels were falling apart but the frame was solid and made entirely without nails.  Even breaking it up to throw it out would be difficult.  While we were trying a heavy equipment driver came around the corner to haul away broken cement and offered to break down the old cabinet as well.  All we could do is agree with the owner that it was a shame to lose it but nothing could be done.

In the back of the building we found a small vat of unopened miso, perhaps this one could be saved?  As we opened it the pungent smell overpowered the foul odor of the sludge that our noses were becoming used to.  The women came out of the house to see if it was any good and everyone exclaimed how delightful the smell was.  But when we opened it up, we found that the terrible water had found its way in and the miso was ruined.  Three year Sendai miso that had been put in the year before – what a waste.  The grandmother once again had tears in her eyes, but we told her we don’t have to throw away the vat – “it is still usable, you can make miso again for next year.”  We scooped out the bright orange miso from the vat, and the center part looked good enough to eat, but of course we could not.

By the end of the day, the small building was clean and bare, the dishes laid out for the next day’s team to clean and wash and surprisingly the large wooden vats came unstuck and were able to be saved as well!  As we looked around it seemed such a small accomplishment in the midst of so many homes, even just in the context of this one home.  But what struck me was that as this family struggled with loss, whether we were able to save something or only help them throw away the things that could not be saved, they did not have to do it alone.  I told the grandmother as we prepared to go that I was looking forward to trying some of her 3 year Sendai miso.  

In Koriyama, well within the 50 mile radius evacuation zone recommended by US embassy, over 1600 people are sheltering at a large conference center.  The have settled in for a long stay with no end in sight.  Little by little cardboard dividers have gone up to give a modicum of privacy but the wear of living day in and day out is evident on every person’s face.

CRASH has been sending teams here daily to help meet emotional needs amongst the evacuees.  Many of them feel that their plight has been ignored compared to the more dramatic needs to the north along the tsunami hit coast.  As the CRASH emotional care volunteers give hand massages and listen to their “clients”, many express that since the nuclear incident no one has touched them and the simple act releases a flood of emotions as they release the pain that has built up inside.

Children are another large part of the work of CRASH and teams are helping to watch the children while their parents are trying to find work or put their lives back together.