A day after Friday’s devastating earthquake in Japan, overturned boats, sheds and drum cans gradually became visible in the fishing port of Misawa as seawater drained away. At 9:00 a.m. on 13 March, the evacuation order was lifted, allowing fishermen to inspect the tsunami damage.
At the two-story office building of the fishery cooperative, they found broken windows and pillars leaning askew. Documents, desks and shelves formed rubble piles. Coop members tried to salvage files and record books to dry in the air outside.
Several ships had been cast ashore, while stored fishing gear was washed to sea. Thirty-four fishing boats belonging to cooperative members were evacuated to sea immediately after the earthquake, as a tsunami at sea is experienced as a large swell rather than a breaking wave. These vessels returned safely to port on Sunday. However, the more than 30 vessels that remained in port were lost.
Squid, crab, whitebait, salmon, flounder and sole are among the species landed in Misawa. The most important shellfish is the Sakhalin surf clam (Pseudocardium sachalinense), though Soma City in Fukushima Prefecture, to the south and also in the affected area, is the leading port for this species. There is foreign participation in this fishery.
Misawa City holds an annual surf clam festival. The festival, with expected attendance of 1,000, was scheduled to be held on Sunday.
The city of Misawa is about 20 kilometers north of Hachinohe in eastern Aomori Prefecture, the northernmost prefecture of Honshu Island. As of 2009, the city had an estimated population of 42,399, exclusive of personnel and dependents at a nearby U.S. airbase.
The Misawa Air Base was out of the tsunami zone but lost power after the earthquake that hit about 100 miles off the coast of northern Japan. Now it is on backup generators and is serving as an important conduit for relief efforts.
A U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker arrived at the base on Sunday with the first U.S. humanitarian relief workers to reach the area. More than 50 Civil Engineer members arrived from Kadena Air Base, Japan, to help with base recovery. Two urban search and rescue teams from the U.S. Army Reserves, one from Fairfax County, Va., and another from Los Angeles also flew in on Sunday. They consisted of about 150 rescuers and 12 rescue dogs. Another rescue crew from United Kingdom consisting of 60 rescuers and two dogs was also scheduled to arrive.
