After the earthquake and tsunami last March in Japan, people on the West Coast have lived with the horrible possibility that they have been subjected to a very real, yet entirely invisible reminder of Japan’s devastation: radiation. Now we can look forward to a tangible record of the disaster as well, as 5 to 20 tons of debris that washed into the Pacific Ocean heads our way. That’s 5 to 20 tons of things – cars, boats, appliances, boots, washbasins, furniture, buoys, and rooftops – that were once a part of the lives of tens of thousands of people.
It’s spread over a large area, roughly twice the size of Texas, and it should begin to wash ashore in Oregon and Washington at the beginning of 2014. It’s easy to call these floating islands of stuff “garbage,” and would probably be an accurate description at first blush except that these things were never thrown away; they were the bits and pieces of people’s lives. It isn’t an unused, dilapidated old boat floating in the debris; it was once a source of income or pleasure for someone. That boat, along with everything else found moving towards us, simply disappeared one day along with at least 20,000 people. It’s a snapshot of the living that simply and suddenly was not.
We have time to think about what’s heading towards us, the experts tell us how dangerous the mounds of things actually are to us. As they do, count off the dead and remember: the boots belonged to someone once that had no idea they’d end up on the shores of America, and if still alive, is sorrier than we can ever be that they have.
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