TONI, Japan — March 14, 2014 — When the tsunami smashed the seafood processing factory where Shoichi Sato was working, he lost his job but eventually found a new life. Three years later, Sato is among the businessmen helping to bring back the fishing industry, long a mainstay livelihood for coastal towns along Japan’s northeastern coast.
Sato’s company, Kamaishi Hikari Foods, employs only 25 people but supports hundreds more who sell their catches of octopus, squid, salmon and mackerel for processing right at the water’s edge. In Toni, whose entire port was wrecked by the tsunami, it’s about the only game in town.
Businesses throughout Japan’s northeastern Tohoku region face a reality TV show’s worth of obstacles to setting up shop, from shortages of financing and construction workers and materials, to lengthy delays in administrative approvals and overburdened transport networks. For Sato, it was the Qatar Fund Foundation and other groups that pitched in with funds to buy equipment and advice on how to best run his new business.
Sitting in his second story office overlooking a wharf still being reconstructed, Sato said he got ‘‘zero’’ financial help from the government, which until recently wouldn’t approve subsidies for new businesses.
Across the region, the government says nearly two-thirds of damaged land has been salvaged and 78 percent of fishery processing restarted. But for the majority, sales are well below pre-disaster levels. Most damaged stores and other businesses are operating from temporary quarters such as shipping containers and prefabricated huts.
The regional economy was in trouble even before the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster that contaminated chunks of the coast with radiation. The 18,520 people dead or missing as a result of the natural disasters were remembered this week as Japan marked the third anniversary of the tsunami.
Read the full story by the Associated Press at The Boston Globe