At midnight on Saturday April 30th our convoy of two 4-tonne and one 2 tone trucks, a parts & supplies caravan and two pace cars carrying a dozen crew members and around 100 bikes left Bikesforjapan’s depot in Omiya bound for Bfj’s storage area run by Marumiya Transportation in Sendai. Our mission this time was to deliver 220 bikes to two locations in Kesennuma and Iwate.
We arrived in Sendai shortly before 8am and, after an hour of loading additional bikes onto the trucks, split up on different routes bound for Kesennuma in Miyagi-Prefecture and Tono-shi in Iwate Prefecture.
My team, including Hiroki Iguchi, Bryan Wolfe and Jeff Koller, left first to make the 160km journey to Kesennuma - a town whose name had become synonymous with the tsunami disaster through the many horrific videos shown on the news and over YouTube. We arrived there at around noon.
Our point of contact was Mr. Murakami, a Councillor with Kesennuma City’s local government, with whom we had been put in touch by NPO “One Family Sendai”.
Mr. Murakami had asked for 60 bikes (50 for adults, 10 for kids), to be used as rental bicycles for a group of 100 people who will be moving out of a shelter into temporary housing next week. These people currently have no way to get around other than on foot. Having these bikes will enable adults to go out to clean up the sites of their former houses as well as to look for new jobs. They will also enable the middle school and high school children in the community to make the commute to their schools, which are now a further distance to travel away.
As the mayor and one of his colleagues treated us to a bowl of ramen noodles for lunch, he explained that generations of his family as well as his own wife and kids had lived in Kesennuma all their life. During that time the town’s closely knit community had come through many onslaughts of the forces of nature including several major storms, hurricanes and floods. All people in the town had regularly trained for tsunami emergencies. But nothing could have prepared them for this tsunami which had gone beyond any of their worst nightmares.
The seemingly-impossible task of rebuilding the place would take a year or two, he thought - but it was the longer-term economic consequences he was most worried about. He asked us to please encourage our friends and acquaintances to come and visit Kesennuma when things are better in the future, to see the beautiful town, to eat the delicious seafood, and to give our continued support to the people of the area.
Daiki and his team made their way to the Tono-shi in Iwate Prefecture, around 200 km away. Located inland, Tono-shi was not affected by the earthquake but has good access to the region. The town has set up a distribution centre for inbound supplies destined for the coastal towns and villages of Iwate that were hit by the tsunami. Individuals and community representatives, volunteer groups and NPOs visit the centre daily to collect necessary food, clothing, sanitary products and other essentials to take back to be shared among their people. We had been asked for 150 bikes that would be provided to the people from these areas.
When Daiki arrived the mayor of Tono-shi was on-site to give his personal thanks to Bikesforjapan for providing support. Many supplies had already come through but there was still a significant need for bikes among the many coastal populations. As soon as Daiki and his team started unloading the bikes, several adults and kids came along to receive them. They’d been waiting for the chance to own a bike again for several weeks.
Due to the traffic in the area on Sunday, we were not able to make our last intended delivery for people in Ishinomaki. We will be delivering these bikes which we promised to them mid-way through this week instead.
Thank you again to you all for your support so far. We’ll be keeping you updated with further photographs and posts over the next few weeks. In the meantime please all have a fantastic Golden Week vacation!
Very best,
Henry
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