By May 2011, I had already decided never to set foot on the Iwate coast again. I reasoned I had been through enough just being inland, with the earthquake and the nuclear scare. At first, I avoided the tsunami footage and news articles because I felt if I saw anything else, between that and the aftershocks, I was just going to crack psychologically. Gradually, once I started to feel better, I reasoned that I still needed a break. Then I concluded that I had been through enough, like some disaster quota had been reached, and that was why I shouldn’t go to the coast.

Really, at that point, I was just avoiding going to the coast for the same reason people avoid looking at homeless people. I didn’t want to come into contact with people less fortunate than I was, because that would be uncomfortable. I might be required to feel something, and with that feeling might come a sense of responsibility, or commitment, and then I might have to adjust my schedule to include volunteering, and for some reason I didn’t want that to happen. Now I can’t seem to remember why. What exactly was it I thought I was doing with Saturdays that was so important?

Going to Kamaishi in May 2011 was a coincidence. I met a friend who had gone volunteering with HANDS, two times in a span of two weeks. I promised him the first time I would give it a go, and felt like I really would for a bit, but after a week I was almost about to forget about it. Then I met him again, a second time, and my conscience, which has really been mostly dormant for the past ten years of my life, sensed I was in a weakened state and took the opportunity to gnaw full force at my ankle until I signed up.

Then I saw what had happened to the coast, and the rest kind of happened on its own. But before, I was ready to forget about it. So I think I understand when people, Japanese or anyone, say that they’re busy to come, or it’s too painful to see what’s happened, or maybe next time. I think I understand when I see less volunteers at the centers and notice less inquiries about volunteering, I think I’ll understand when I go to the United States for Christmas and see that really, no one covers Japan anymore. Not as much.

It’s natural, I guess, it’s supposed to be natural, that more and more people are going to see this as a Wikipedia article or a news story that has already passed, A combination of time and distance and “it’s not my country” or “it’s not my prefecture” or “it’s not my area of the prefecture” is going to smooth everything over. But the horrible thing is, it’s going to smooth everything over for everyone but the people on the coast.

The situation on the coast has improved, but it hasn’t changed as much as the way people view it, as a historical event. Something that has already been cleaned up, something that will resolve on its own. But I can tell you that last weekend we cleaned a floorful of rotting clothes and bedding still wet from the tsunami, and tomorrow we will go to Rikuzentakata where there’s an enormous gaping hole in the middle of the city because everything got washed away. Last week nothing had been solved, this week nothing has been solved, and I expected next week nothing will be solved yet either. Imagine my surprise when English language news articles tell me that the cleanup phase has ended. No, not here, not as of last Saturday. And even when it does end, that’s absolutely not the end of this at all.

I’ve seen it too often lately to be a coincidence. Many different Japanese NPOs, who have talked with coastal residents in much closer detail than I have, all coming up with the same message. Residents see less volunteers coming in, less NPOs, and they express the fear that they have already been forgotten.