"I have a responsibility to start over"

The campground I will be moving to shortly also operates as a shelter for 120 people.  One of those staying at the shelter is a city council member.  He was instrumental in pulling strings to get us to the right people to get permission to use the campground as one of our bases.  There's a photo of Hirota Bay hanging in the main hall of one of the campground buildings.  Hirota Bay is where Rikuzentakata is located.  It's this bay that the tsunami came into and then onto Rikuzentakata.  I will find a way to take a photo from a hill so you can get a sense of the extent of the damage in Rikuzentakata.

Hirota Bay is known in Japan for its oysters.  Other areas are known for producing mass quantities of oysters but Hirota Bay provides the gourmet brand sold only in high-end restaurants and hotels in Tokyo.  The entire oyster crop was destroyed.  The city council member who I've now become friends with is also a fisherman, or rather an oyster-man.  He lost everything.  He said it will take him five years to get his first oyster harvest back.

He runs this family business with his three sons.  While all of his family members survived, he lost all of his houses and had to run up the mountain towards the campground to get to higher ground.  He, too, watched the tsunami destroy his homes, Hirota Bay, his oysters and livelihood.  I asked what the local oyster growers were going to do here on out as all of them lost their crop.  He said half would take their allotted payment from the government and retire.  "Not me," he said.  "I have a responsibility to start over.  This is a family business.  I need to have something to pass onto my sons.  They are still young.  If I can live five more years and get them their first harvest after the tsunami I've done my part."

What does one say to this?  I might worry about where my next job is coming from but I have a spouse who has a steady job.  Both of us are employable.  We can move.  The people here don't have that kind of flexibility.  Houses are gone.  Family members are dead or missing.  Livelihoods shot.  Listening to their stories tests my ability to say the right thing at the right time.  So far I have yet to stick my foot in my mouth.  I am careful to dance delicately around the subject of death and destruction as so many have lost so much.  It's not a casual question.  Offering regrets, comfort and words of kindness only go so far.  This is far more complex than I ever imagined.