It was kind of like the San Andreas movie (not really), except without a sexy hero to save us
I went to see San Andreas this weekend, and it reminded me of my own experience with an earthquake once upon a time, so I thought I’d share my story today. Just an FYI if you’re thinking about seeing the movie, I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars. If you’re into action flicks, you’ll probably enjoy it.
My first duty station in the Air Force was in Japan. I joined the military to leave home and travel the world, and you can’t get much further from Canton, Ohio than Misawa, Japan, which is nearly 10,000 miles away. I had the absolute best time of my life during the two years I was stationed there, and I made friends whom I’m still in frequent contact with to this day.
Save for a few hold outs, the majority of my co-ed dormitory floor was like a mini family. If you forgot to do laundry and needed a clean shirt to wear under your uniform, someone always had your back (thanks BJ!). Late for work and don’t have a car yet? Someone will drop you off at your job (thanks James!). If you cooked something illegally in your electric wok or crock pot and shared it with friends, you could best believe when they did the illegal cooking you’d get a taste too (we were not allowed to cook in the dorms).
We had a large community room in the middle of each floor, with a big screen television and plenty of couches, chairs, and tables, that served as a central place for everyone to socialize. We’d get together on the occasional Friday night and watch movies, or play card or board games, and about once a month we’d venture off-base and have a ‘dorm dinner’ at one of the local traditional Japanese restaurants.
On this particular Friday, January 15th, 1993, we’d gone out just as we always had for our monthly get together. The name of the restaurant escapes me, but it was an old hole in the wall favorite that had recently moved to a new building in an unpopulated location. There were about twelve of us in total, and the staff sat us at a large, beautiful cherry wood table in a private back room, and I remember I was seated with my back to the door. This bothered me slightly, partly because I don’t like to sit with my back to the door (just a weird Angela-ism), and partly because it was kind of annoying to have the wait staff constantly in motion behind me every time they came in and out of the room. It doesn’t bother me to the point that I’d ask someone to switch places with me, and in this particular situation I was ok with it because there was a window on the opposite side of the room that gave me a pretty good view of the outside world. Even if that outside world only consisted of a two lane asphalt road and an open field.
We were loud and boisterous as we gave each other a hard time and shook off the stress of the week. There might have been some alcohol involved but I don’t really remember (I never cared for sake), and with such a large group it took a little while to get served. I ordered my favorite, sweet and sour chicken, and this place had a special way of making it that I haven’t had since. They used non-breaded, grilled or baked chicken, and man was it delicious. Once they placed the food on the table, the room got significantly quieter as we all began to eat.
When I was about halfway finished with my meal, I paused for a moment and looked out the window. I’ll do my best to try to describe what I saw. In the distance, I could see the asphalt road, off to the left, and the surrounding countryside sort of rising, or curling towards us. What I mean is, if you can imagine being at the beach and seeing the waves coming in towards the shore, they have sort of a curl to them as they roll in to meet the sand. I was watching solid ground do something similar to that. It wasn’t huge, but it was enough that I could clearly see there was motion, in the ground, coming directly towards us. I did my best to find a video to explain what I mean, and this is the closest thing I could find. Keep in mind in the video, that’s a suspended bridge with nothing underneath of it. I saw this similar effect on solid ground, although nowhere near as extreme, but with that same rolling wavy effect, enough so I could see it coming from a distance. It’s an image I’ll never forget.
I have no shame in telling you this scared the crap out of me. Not literally, but it scared me so badly that I immediately crawled under the table. And while I would love to tell you that I was the female version of Dewayne “The Rock” Johnson in this situation, and gave my table mates fair warning of what was about to happen, I did no such thing. I said nothing as I did what came naturally to me, it was pure instinct get under that table as quickly as possible. And since we’d been joking around the entire time, the rest of the table thought I was playing some sort of game or trick, and started telling me to stop playing and get up. But within seconds that wave of movement hit the building, and suddenly I was staring at eleven other pairs of saucer-sized eyes under that table. And let me tell you, even if you’re agnostic or an atheist, when the ground is shaking beneath you and there’s nothing you can do but duck for cover and hang on, you will find a god to pray to. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced such a feeling of fear and helplessness in all my life.
The situation only lasted a minute or two, but that minute or two felt like forever. We emerged from under the table, a little worse for the wear mentally, but ok physically. The restaurant staff came around to check on us and make sure everyone was all right, and not long afterwards assured us that other than some things being knocked off the shelves, structurally the restaurant was completely in tact.
Later, we learned there was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast of Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. And with Misawa being just south of the area, we certainly felt the effects of it. There were quite a few insurance claims of broken goods, but no reports of serious injuries or damage.
The thing is, we experienced small tremors all the time, so I was no stranger to the ground shaking. In fact, the day I’d arrived, I can remember being in my dorm room and experiencing one. There were no less than four other women in my room, grilling me about what it was like stateside. You have to understand, there were no cell phones with international calling plans at that time. There might be a single landline per room (they weren’t standard), and it had to be in your or your roommate’s name. Calls to the US were a dollar a minute, there were no discount plans or calling cards just yet, and the money for the bill was taken directly out of that person’s paycheck. So good luck getting paid if your roommate was homesick or in a long distance relationship and ran the phone bill up. New music, CDs, were only shipped in once a week, on Wednesdays, and if you didn’t have a buddy there to represent you when they were put on the shelves, you weren’t getting a copy of the latest Mary J. Blige or A Tribe Called Quest album. There were only three television channels that broadcast in English, and most times two of them were showing the same thing. And all of the American television shows were way behind. Not like one or two episodes behind, like entire seasons and sometimes years behind. In some cases the shows weren’t even on the air anymore in the US.
So there I was sitting on my bed, tired and really just wanting to get some sleep, being grilled by these girls about the latest and greatest in the states, but not wanting to be rude, and all of a sudden the bed begins to shake. It’s subtle at first, and after a moment or two I remember actually asking if the bed was shaking or if it was just me and my jet lag. And they told me, very casually I might add, ‘it’s just a tremor, nothing to worry about, we get them all the time.’ And quite honestly I’d gotten used to them, actually thought they were kind of fun after a while, until that evening in the restaurant.
We put a wrap on our dinner and headed back to the dorm, and I remember the first thing I did was call home. I was done with Japan and ready to get back to the states, and was already trying to figure out a way to completely forego the remaining five months I had left on my tour of duty. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, but I was able to leave without experiencing another major incident. Being in that situation gave me a brand new respect for Mother Nature and just how destructive she could be. And quite frankly, I don’t care to ever experience another tremor, even a minor one, in my lifetime. But with the New Madrid fault line to the west of us, and the possible seismic hazards to the east of us, you never know what could happen.
Lest I be accused of trying to incite panic, let me be clear. The chances of experiencing a major earthquake in Tennessee are very, very slim.
I hope. 😀
Eternally grateful to be back on solid, stable, non-shaky ground,
Angela