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Courtesy of Shelley Fredrickson
Monty, center, with his sister, Shelley, and his brother, Ian Dickson, at his graduation from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
The family of Montgomery Dickson, a popular teacher in coastal Japan who died in the March 11 tsunami, has said a tearful goodbye to him in the town he came to view as his second home.
Shelley Fredrickson, Dickson’s older sister, said she and other relatives flew on April 13 to Rikuzentakata in the northeast – a city of 23,000 that was flattened by the quake and tsunami.
“The devastation was incredible. We are still trying to believe what we saw and we were there one month after the fact,” Fredrickson, a 44-year-old sales representative from Anchorage, Alaska, wrote to msnbc.com in an e-mail. “After the bulldozers and excavators began the cleanup, after the roads were opened, we were still speechless.”
The family knows little about the circumstances of Dickson's death. The last one to speak to the 26-year-old known as “Monty-san” was his girlfriend Naoko, who he called after his students had evacuated from the school where he taught.
Following evacuation procedure, Dickson - a teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) - then headed to the Board of Education office on the third floor at City Hall, which was believed to be a safe haven. Instead, it was overrun by the tsunami generated by the powerful earthquake that struck offshore.
“Standing at the foot of the building he had been in and looking up at the roof was scary knowing the water was that high,” Fredrickson wrote. “I do not know how anyone lived through it but some have. I wish he had, too.”
An International Medical Corps team that visited Rikuzentakata soon after the disaster said it “was completely destroyed by the tsunami and no persons were present. Showing the depth of the tsunami wave and extent of the destruction, water marks were observed at a height of up to 10 meters (nearly 33 feet) on the sides of hills."
The family placed white chrysanthemums, a traditional funeral flower in Japan, where his body was found – a kilometer away from City Hall- as well as where his apartment once stood and at the building he was last in. They also met people who knew him, and visited the schools where he taught.
Dickson was the second American confirmed by the U.S. State Department to have died in the disaster in Japan, out of 12,554 confirmed deaths. The other American fatality, 24-year-old Taylor Anderson of Richmond, Va., also was a JET teacher.
Family of US teacher killed in Japan travel road to acceptance
“He was well known, loved, very popular, the kids loved him as well as his fellow teachers. There were many stories that touched us deeply as he made quite a mark on this town,” Fredrickson wrote.
'He truly was a bridge between our countries'
She said people spoke of his proficiency in Japanese, how he participated in cultural comedy skits and how he emceed the Christmas party. They also gave the family gifts, including pictures of him, things he wrote, and the mayor – whose children Dickson taught -presented them with a poem written by a famous Iwate poet.
“Monty truly was loved here and found a second home,” Fredrickson said. “I have comfort in knowing this.”
The family spread some of his ashes on a mountain that has a road where Monty loved to ride his bike, Fredrickson said. At the top of the road was a children's park.
"We felt it was fitting since the children loved him and here he could watch over them," she wrote. "Monty found a second home there so it felt right to leave a part of him there. We couldn't fully take him away from this town or these people since he was obviously much loved and missed."
Fredrickson returned home to Alaska on April 17 - but she said it was not likely to be her last trip to Japan.
“I wish I could have visited with him showing me his favorite places as I kept wondering if the places I walked had also held his steps,” she wrote. “He truly was a bridge between our countries. He will continue to be an inspiration to all who knew him and hopefully to those who did not for I believe the stories of my brother will carry on.”
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We are all ambassadors for the U.S. when traveling or living abroad. It sounds like this young man was excellent at fulfilling that role.
Paduki: I should hope that living "abroad" has done much to keep me from being an "ambassador for the U.S." One of the best things about living outside of the country in which one has been born is the realization that people communicate best when they do not treat someone who happened to be born in one place as representative of that place, in either the legal/ambassadorial meaning of representative or in the "typical" meaning of representative. When I meet, say, someone born in Korea, I hope I don't treat or think of that person as an "ambassador" for Korea; likewise, Mr. Dickson will be best remembered as Mr. Dickson, not as "an American."
As another American living abroad, I have to disagree with your point @whenceonewonders. I've been living abroad for nearly four years, in which time I've had countless friends tell me that I don't fit the obnoxious stereotypes that they hold towards Americans. They compliment my world perspective, my polite manners, and my attempt to integrate myself into the culture of the land where I reside.
While I can certainly understand and appreciate the need to be recognized as an individual, I can't help but smile every time someone tells me that I've broken a stereotype they once held about my compatriots. True, I no longer live on American soil, and my heart has found a new home in a foreign land. Nevertheless, that heart still beats red, white, and blue. Knowing that someone has been touched or influenced by me, a simple 21 year old boy from America's heartland, never ceases to put a smile on my face.
I love my home country...and having the opportunity to represent the fiber that truly makes up our great nation...strong characters, a love for our fellow man, a sense of pride in our history, and a desire to make the world a better place...is a privilege and an honor that I am proud to carry. I would hope the same rings true for any American outside the United States.
Indeed, as an American living abroad, I too strive to break the negative stereotypes created by the world of politics, war and Hollywood and connect with people as human beings while celebrating life and the best of diverse global cultures, reaching for our highest common good of compassion, service, love...In PEACE : )
AZetterlund: Perhaps you have not been outside of the US for long enough; if you're still referring to your present home as a "foreign land" it would seem you're not so enculturated as others might be. From what I have gleaned from the story of Mr. Montgomery (primarily the first two stories MSNBC ran, about his disappearance and about his body's having been found, respectively), it seems he left the United States at least in part because of a desire to experience living in Japan or some aspects of Japanese life. I am touched and encouraged by the gesture his family made in leaving his remains in the country he chose (rather than the one in which, by accident of birth, he was raised).
The actions of Mr. Montgomery and his family show that the virtues you enumerate ("strong characters, a love for our fellow man [sic], a sense of pride in our history, and a desire to make the world a better place," though I'm not sure about the history part) are not unique to people from or in the United States. It's a pleasing thing.
 As the parent of a JET, my heart goes out to the Frederickson family. We all share your pain
It's true. The good die young. Thank you Monty-san for your dedication to teaching. Thank you to Monty's family for raising such an outstanding citizen of the world. He will be missed.
WhenceOneWonders-- It is a foreign land as opposed to the land of his birth. This was "foreign land" to me at one time. It was not the land of my birth.
You're right, Susie, and that was my point. Calling the land where you live a "foreign" evinces that one is still in the phase in which both you and I were in at one time and apparently are no longer. When that "foreign" land becomes "home" or at least not "foreign" one might be said to be more enculturated than someone who is just off the boat, as it were.