Why a book describing the real life of people in distress on a mountain that elementary school students climb on field trips is so popular… “I wish I could at least say goodbye.
With the popularity of mountaineering, “lost-and-found” is on the rise
This is not just a lost article.
It was the body and belongings of a person who was lost on this mountain.
I wondered how such a thing could happen in a familiar mountainous area. I was confused by this unexpected situation.
Mountain climbing has become popular among people of all ages in recent years. Along with this trend, the number of people in distress has been on the rise. According to data released by the National Police Agency, there were 3,568 cases of accidents in 2011, the highest number since statistics began. Of these, 335 people were killed and 42 were missing.
When one hears the word “distress,” a situation in which one’s life is in imminent danger comes to mind. Therefore, we tend to think that we are talking about high-altitude mountains such as the Northern and Southern Alps, but this data also includes people lost in lower mountains and satoyama.
The data may not be clear to those who, like the author, have no mountain climbing experience.
What does it mean to be lost on a public mountain trail that you visited for hiking or playing in the water?
Why do so many people go missing?
There is a book that answers these questions.
It is a nonfiction book titled “Until the Day I Can Say ‘Okaeri’: From the Frontline of Mountain Disaster Search” (Shinchosha), which has been in print since it was first published in mid-April two years ago.
The author is Fujimi Nakamura, a nurse with two children and the leader of LiSS, a private mountain distress search team.
The book contains six stories of how Nakamura and her team found people in distress. The book painfully conveys the fact that even in the low mountains and satoyama, accidents can occur in a moment’s notice, and that the families are eager to see the victims and hope that they will return home soon.
We asked Ms. Nakamura about LiSS activities and what she wanted to convey through her book.
The reality is that many families of missing persons have “given up” on the search.
When a person goes missing in the mountains, the first responders to search for the missing person are the mountain rescue teams formed by the police, fire department, and other public organizations.
According to Nakamura, the search by the primary rescue team is terminated after three days to a week, and after that, the family can either search on their own or ask a private search group to help them.
Currently, there are two or three private search groups like ours, but these groups have only been in existence for about five years,” Nakamura said.
Also, there are 40 to 50 people missing in distress each year, but private search groups receive only about 10% of these requests for searches. In many other cases, they give up. If the family is elderly, they may not even know that private search groups exist.”
In fact, Ms. Nakamura, who is a nurse, entered this world when she accidentally found the body of a missing person on a mountain she climbed with her “mentor,” who was involved in mountain rescue. In his book, he wrote about that time.
This was the first time I had seen the body of a person who had been dead for three years. And this was in the middle of a mountain that is often referred to as a beginner’s trail.
I couldn’t stop crying when I imagined that he had been waiting to be found alone in such a place, just a few steps off the trail ……, for three years.
This experience led to an invitation to join a private mountain distress search group, where he became involved in the search. He came up with the idea of using the methods he had developed as a nurse in the field of profiling.
She then established the mountain distress search team “LiSS. She explains the reason for establishing the organization.
Until then, I had participated in searches with another organization. The search itself was not much different from that of a public mountain rescue team, and I often felt uncomfortable. I wondered if I should start my own group and search in the way I thought best.
What pushed me back was my encounter with Ms. M, the eldest daughter of Mr. S, the person in distress who appears at the end of my book. I strongly wanted to find my father for her, and at the same time, I began to think that the best way to find Mr. S. was to search in my own way, and I decided to become independent.
Utilizing “profiling” learned in nursing school
What is Nakamura’s search method?
The primary rescue team, which conducts a search immediately after a disaster, focuses on saving lives and generally searches in areas of high accident frequency and dangerous places within its jurisdiction.
On the other hand, LiSS, which is often requested to search after primary rescue is terminated, gathers information on each person in distress and uses it as a clue for the search.
Information gathered from family and friends includes the name, age, climbing history, personality and occupation of the person in distress, as well as hobbies other than climbing, usual habits, conversations held before climbing, and climbing clothes worn on the day of the climb. By obtaining a great deal of information, the team can speculate and analyze the behavior of the person in distress, such as what he or she was thinking on the day, what route he or she walked, where he or she stopped, what he or she saw, and so on. Nakamura calls this method “profiling.
Communication with the family is essential to this process. Since the family members are not likely to tell Mr. Nakamura everything from the very beginning, he builds a relationship of trust with them through repeated careful interviews.
The use of profiling in the search process is a natural part of the nursing profession.
Nurses formulate a nursing plan when caring for hospitalized patients, and it is essential to elicit from patients and their families what kind of social life they have had up to now, what they are like at home, what their interests are, and how they plan to reintegrate into society when they leave the hospital,” she said.
Nurses do this on a daily basis because they learn it in nursing school, but when I incorporated this process into the search, it fit surprisingly well. I thought, “This is something I can use.”
However, in the field of search, it is not the patient himself/herself who is the source of information. It is the people around them, such as family members and friends. Many families live far away from each other, and it is not uncommon for them to be unaware of which mountain they climbed, for what purpose, and what they looked like when they went out. The task of interviewing these people is more difficult than one might imagine.
“Sometimes, I go to the homes of people in distress and ask them to show me their homes through their smartphones, while I look through the screen and ask, ‘Do you have any climbing gear there? Do you have any photos? I may ask, ‘Do you have any climbing gear there?
For example, if I learn from your family that you are a flower lover and used to take pictures of flowers, you may be taking pictures of flowers in the mountains somewhere. If we can extract this fact from the mountaineering friends, we can find out the mountain the person in distress climbed and his/her mountaineering style.
Furthermore, if we can find out what flowers are in bloom at this time of year, we can predict the route they took. The idea is to ask as many questions as possible, no matter how trivial, and to link the necessary information together.
It took “as little as two hours” to find them.
Thus, the primary rescue team of a public organization and LiSS, a private search team, have the same objective of “searching for people in distress,” but their search methods are very different. If this is the case, then listening to Mr. Nakamura’s story, it seems to me that the probability of saving lives would be greatly improved if both search teams worked in parallel from the early stage of the search.
In the past, LiSS was able to find a person in distress only two hours after the search began. However, the search request was received 20 days after the primary rescue was terminated. If LiSS had entered the search immediately after the distress, the possibility of survival would have been high.
I think it is because the existence of private search teams has become widely known recently, and we are receiving more and more requests to search before primary rescue is terminated. In some cases, we are approached as early as two days after a disaster.
Even in the case of parallel searches, we confirm necessary information through family members and make plans so that there is no overlap in movements with public agencies. This process is very important.
At LiSS, we try to have one coordinator, usually me. There is also a lot of administrative work, such as applying for permission from the government, which is necessary to facilitate the search.
In the field, the search is conducted by a team of two members. The number of parties depends on the budget, sometimes one, sometimes two or three.
The daily allowance is at least 80,000 yen, including transportation costs. If you have mountain insurance, you are covered, but 90% of the families who request LiSS do not have such insurance. There is no mountain where there is no possibility of being lost,” he said. I strongly urge you to have mountain insurance,” he said.
As mentioned above, the search so far has taken a minimum of two hours and a maximum of three years. During that time, communication with the families of missing persons is ongoing. Naturally, the families’ minds may change, so they are handled with the utmost care. Mental care is also an important part of LiSS’s work.
Immediately after a disaster, the families are eager to find the missing person as soon as possible, so we first concentrate on getting information from the missing person. However, as the days go by, the family members may want someone to listen to them and help them vent their feelings of confusion. Therefore, we try to listen to them first.
Also, after a number of years, the family may feel like giving up. But they still want us to continue the search because there is a part of them that cannot give up. We will not give up because we must respond to that feeling at all costs. Even if we feel stuck, we will reset our minds and go for it.”
We want to tell the story of the families who are waiting for their return.
Nakamura decided to publish the book because he has been close to the families of the missing.
Most nonfiction books on mountain distresses focus on the survival of the people who have gone missing, but rarely do they write about the families who are waiting for their return, how they feel, how they are spending their time, and what kind of family they are ultimately going to raise. After receiving the offer to publish the book, I became more and more eager to tell the story of these families.
However, I was afraid that it would be difficult to obtain the families’ approval to write about their actual searches because of the sensitive nature of the content. In fact, however, they willingly agreed. Not only that, after the publication of the book, I received nothing but positive feedback. We received a lot of positive feedback, such as, “I feel like my family left behind some kind of proof that they were still alive,” which was very encouraging.
When asked what he would like to say to future climbers, he responded, “I would like to tell climbers that it is not a sad climb, but a way of life.
I want mountain climbers to enjoy mountain climbing, not be sad about it. I want climbers to enjoy mountain climbing, not be sad about it. Some people say, ‘I would be happy to die in the mountains,’ but it is never happy to die in the mountains. I want climbers to be prepared to do whatever it takes to make it back home. I hope that you will enjoy climbing the mountain with the skill to return home.
Nakamura’s words are very important, as he has watched over many families waiting for their return.
Fujimi Nakamura is the representative of LiSS, a private mountain distress search team that conducts search activities for missing persons in the mountains and provides support to the families of missing persons. Nurse. She conducts search activities for missing persons in distress, carefully interviewing them and working closely with their families. She also gives lectures and disseminates information on distress search and outdoor first aid.
Reporting and writing： Keiko Tsuji
