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ADRIFT AT SEA: A PLEA FOR THE REFUGEE TERESA H . JANSSEN hen I was a little girl, my mother took us to the beaches of Puget Sound. We went to the sea because it was free, and Wamong the few places a mother of five could afford to bring her brood. My father was never with us, but that seemed natural to me. Each beach was different, depending on the work of current, wind, and tide. On some, we found sand dollars, others were littered with clam shells and flat gray rocks that ground against one another as we walked upon them, and most featured weathered logs of Douglas fir and cedar, clumps of stinky seaweed, and long, skinny kelp we swung above our heads like lassoes. Human debris washed onto certain parts of the beach. Usually we stepped over it or passed it by. I was a child and felt no responsibility for what was lost or discarded. Now, I walk beaches searching for what has been left behind. If I am lucky, I find little wedges of polished glass or a milky agate. In the years since the 2011 Japanese tsunami, caused by a massive earthquake that killed nearly 19,000, I have found increasing amounts of debris on my walks. Pacific beaches from northern California to Alaska have been littered with fragments of plastic, Styrofoam fishing floats, bags, and broken bottles. In Washington State alone on one day in April 2016, Teresa H . Janssen 1,400 volunteers removed more than twenty tons of trash—enough to 183 fill a dozen dumpsters. I am a high school French and English teacher. When I teach the French –er conjugations, I include the verbs jeter and flotterto help my students remember the verb endings, and because I believe it is important for them to know the difference. It can affect how we act. Jeter means to throw away. Jettaison or jetsam, are objects that have been deliberately discarded into the sea, or perhaps tossed overboard by the crew of a ship to lighten its load. Jetsam becomes the property of whoever finds it. Flotter in French means “to float.” Flotsam, derived from the French noun flottaison, is marine debris that has been unintentionally lost— the result of a shipwreck, accident, catastrophic human event or act of nature. Flotsam, by maritime law, still belongs to its owner. Intact flotsam should be cared for and returned. If it cannot be restored to its place of origin, it merits refuge. Some Pacific beachcombers have gone to great lengths to reunite tsunami debris with its owners. A soccer ball, found on an Alaskan beach, was returned to 16-year-old Misaki Murakami, who had lost everything in the tsunami. A volleyball covered with barnacles but bearing dozens of faded signatures, indicating a farewell gift, was returned to a surprised nineteen-year-old woman, Shiori Sato, whose home had been washed away. A yellow buoy marked with the Japanese character Kei was traced to Sakiki Miura. She is a widow who had used it as a sign for her restaurant, also destroyed. Elated to have her treasured buoy returned, she decided to reopen the restaurant and begin again. I have come to believe that whatever or whoever has been lost or survived a journey at sea is our responsibility. I am drawn to the stories of people dispossessed. I browse thrift shops, picking up photographs of children, young couples and families, arranged like still lifes in long- ADRIFT at SEA: A PLEA for THE Refugee 184 shut studios. I search the backs of the pictures for names and dates, but usually find none. I study the frozen faces, pondering whether they were inadvertently given away with a box of knickknacks or tossed out when they were no longer recognized. I stare at posters of missing persons and try to memorize their features, in the possibility that I will recognize them in a chance encounter at a gas station or in a grocery line. I wonder whether the adults and teenagers chose to leave home, or whether they were taken by force, now living a nightmare I cannot imagine. I look into the eyes of the littlest children, some in the company of noncustodial parents, others simply disappeared. Do they know they are lost? I cringe at the thought that they may never be found, and I turn away. I remember how it is to feel adrift. I was a year old when my father left. I didn’t miss him at first, because I didn’t know what a father was. But as I watched my childhood friends with their dads, I felt an emptiness grow inside me. Sometimes, when I watched my best friend, Kathy, glide by on her father’s shoulders, a hollow place in my chest began to ache. As my mother struggled to pay for rent and food amid the turbulence of the 1960s, I felt forlorn, even in my crowded home. I longed for a strong, sure anchor—a father to take care of me. As I got older, I began to wonder whether I had been unintentionally lost, the accidental victim of a failed relationship, or whether I had been discarded. I was the fifth child, most likely unplanned, and perhaps one too many for a stressed father on the edge. Perhaps my father had wanted a son, instead of another daughter (his fourth). I feared that if I had been deliberately tossed away, there was little hope of reunification. Jetsam, I seemed to know instinctively, rarely finds its way home. But if I were flotsam, an unintended loss, there was a chance I might be reclaimed by my father, if circumstances changed. Lately, as I walk the beach, I cannot stop thinking about those lost ADRIFT at SEA: A PLEA for THE Refugee Teresa H . Janssen across the sea—the world’s refugees. I agonize over the lack of justice 185 and dignity. Since the advent of the Syrian civil war, eleven million people—over half the country’s prewar population—have been forced to leave their homes. Thousands have braved treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean and Aegean. How do we classify refugees at sea? Are they the world’s debris? What is our responsibility? In my twenties, I became captivated by the plights of people adrift in the world. My first teaching job in the early ’80s was as an English tutor to Vietnamese refugees in Seattle. After the U.S. withdrawal in 1975, the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos suffered continued violence and political persecution. Through the ensuing decade and a half, nearly 850,000 Vietnamese escaped across the South China Sea in overcrowded makeshift boats. A third to a half of the “boat people” perished. Survivors washed up on the shores of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where some were turned away. But most were housed in squalid camps, until their hosts became overwhelmed and refused to accept more. During the Southeast Asian refugee crisis, the United Nations, in a 1979 international conference, recognized that the boat people, displaced as a result of catastrophic human events, could not be safely returned home. In an effort to stem the flood of refugees and deaths at sea, the U.N., including the U.S and France, acknowledged responsibility for decades of destabilizing and destructive interventions in the region. Member nations agreed to fund an orderly system of departure and committed to accept more than a million refugees for resettlement. The UNHCR built the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Bataan, a safe location to house those cleared for resettlement. In the basement of the Seattle church where I taught, my students told stories in broken English of loss and separation, and drifting at sea. I empathized with their struggle against the overwhelming cultural and ADRIFT at SEA: A PLEA for THE Refugee 186 language barriers they encountered in the U.S. and realized the need for better preparation before arrival. In 1985, I went to the Philippines to work at the center for refugees. Perhaps I had a yearning for happy endings. I certainly believed in reunification. When I was ten, my father came back to me. It must have come about gradually, preceded by talks, reconciliation, resolutions, and commitments, but I remember it another way. Suddenly, my dad, nearly a stranger, was living in my home. He went to work in the morning, took showers at night, ate crackers and cheese as he watched TV, and slowly got to know me. It was an awkward, disorienting transition to a new stage of my childhood. He was not the perfect father I had imagined. No piggyback rides, camping trips, or days at the ballpark. He was grumpy in the morning, tired after work, and during my teen years, much too strict. Disappointment aside, as I watched football next to him on the natty brown couch he’d brought from that mysterious place where he’d once lived, and cheered with him when his NFL team scored. I was glad he was there. I would never feel as self-assured as the kids I’d envied, but I had begun to believe that lost people could be found. And if they could not be returned to where they once belonged, they could, at least, begin again. Everyone deserved a second chance. In the Philippines, I supervised Filipino teachers who taught English to refugees bound for North America and Australia. Many were Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians who, having escaped violence or persecution, had languished in refugee camps since before the end of the war.

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