UrbanJamie's photostream  

Tadakiyo Kudo-san is a Shizugawa fisherman. I met him on the ship of one of the boats offered up to help test the robots being deployed in the water to search for rubble. Purple fishing pants, big-framed glasses, a big smile and an eagerness to be back in the water: Tadao san was game for any question or favour we could ask of him.

Here he stands where his massive, two-winged house used to. His parents lived in a wing (where he stands now) that was attached to the house while his wife and children stayed in the other (more to his right and off camera). In traditional Japan, it is common to live with your parents and take care of them rather than sending them to a nursing home. It is often the oldest male sibling's job to takes on this responsibility.

Here, we see Tadao and old traditions of fishing and family meet with a natural disaster.

Tadao's family all survived -- and even managed to save two cars and a couple of their forklifts. Now, they just want to get back out to sea and fish. They are building a new house further away from the shoreline and in an elevated piece of land that they own.

The first fish market that opened in Shizugawa on the 24th of October has brought hope of the slow revival of the industry.

After early risings and long days of filming the robotics crews searching for rubble in the bay of Shizugawa, Dan and I would return to the hotel. It was Dan's first time here. His energy to be in the country helped balance the severity of the disaster with some lighthearted foolery.

Dan McKinney is my thesis supervisor and Directory of Photography of the robot documentary we are working on here. In the above picture he faces what's left of Shizugawa town. I reported on this community for six months prior to our trip out here, the scale of destruction a humbling reminder of the power of nature and humankind's ultimate fragility.

I used to the word "nothing" in this title, but I only mean this when it comes to physical structures. This is because, when it comes to sense of community and the will to move on, I have been confronted time and time again with so much.

The fishermen smile and laugh when they show me the remains of their homes. "When you look around and see the same thing has happened to everyone, you just have to move on to make things better again. If it was only your house among them all, then may think 'why me'?"

The words of Tadao-san, a fisherman who helped with the deployment of search robots on this project and participated in the documentary.

Meanwhile taxi drivers, hotel staff construction crews and convenience store clerks busily do their work. Families that have lost loved ones and have been removed from a previously tightly-knit community speak with determination and confidence that they will be alright.

Researches came out from the U.S. with their top-of-the-line robots to team up with Japanese first responders, professors and fishermen. The team, put together by a world leading robotasist, Dr. Robin Murphy from the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), demoed brand new technology that enables a robot to be deployed in the water and searching within 3 minutes. It uses sonar, video and GPS tracking to search up to 150 metres at any given moment.

For Robin's trip here to Minamisanriku, the purpose was to demonstrate the effectiveness and ease-of-use to the people of Japan. We followed them out to sea and within the span of three hours they found two cars, a light house, dozens of nets, a house and massive tetrapods (controversial cement wave breakers) in an area designated to be "clear" of rubble by the government.

The response from the fishermen (providing the boats) was overwhelmingly positive. Until now they had used the sonar on their fishing vessels which could only generally locate something beneath the water but not pinpoint its location. Now, with CRASAR's bot, not only can it be pinpointed exactly, a diver needs not spend risky minutes underwater locating it, and the GPS coordinates are uploaded to a database on the Net able to be accessed by anyone.

The result: people taken out of harms way, a cleaner ocean and a speedier recovery for the fisherman and their industry.

There is one single hotel leftover south of Minamisanriku: Hotel Kanyo. It's five minutes from one of the hardest hit towns of the coast, Shizugawa. The massive hotels boasts a gorgeous ocean view and stands stories upon stories high above the Pacific. This view, from the 8th floor, looks out across the marine landscape and right into the mouth of the 15-20 metre wave that inundated the area.

The wave actually flooded the bottom floors of the hotel, coming right up to and inundating the outdoor baths.

You can't see it here, fish nets and other signs of marine activity dot the ocean surface along the Minamisanriku coast now. Although the local fisherman say almost all of the work they do is still only for personal harvest. They still are in the process of getting business going again on a scale large enough to support a proper livelihood.