ACC21 is dispatching Asian students studying in Japan to volunteer in Tohoku in order to create a form of support linking the victims with Asian peoples.

From July 29th to July 31st, 6 Asian students from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia joined the second Dispatch of Volunteers to Tohoku.

Below is a report from Ms. Gan Siau Sian, one of the members of the second dispatch.

Volunteer Report
Gan Siau Sien (Malaysia)

We arrived at Sendai at about 6am (30th) to take another bus to the Tome Prefecture Hall.We missed the 6.30am bus because we had no idea where to go. Shimizu san tried her very best to find the exact bus stop  and then we were able to take the 7.10am bus to our desired destination.

We had our breakfast in the bus and took a rest before arriving in Tome City.The weather was so bad on that day but the greenery views along the way captured my attention. I was thinking 'what a pity that such a beautiful place was struck by a disaster!'
However we can't turn back time and must accept it. What we can do now is just try to contribute or help within our  ability as much as possible.

We arrived at the RQ 's HQ at about 10am. After registeration, we fully equiped ourselves with helmets, long jackets, goggles, gloves, boots and masks before traveling to the affected area. We were assigned to the Koizumi team. It was a new experience for me to have to wear this kind of attire and I looked a bit like a fire fighter or a constrution worker. Very interesting.

We met the other volunteers at the site. The rain was getting heavier,  and therefore we were hiding in the shuttle and took pictures for memories. We started the cleaning operation by segregating those washed away by the Tsunami.  We segregated them into 5 major categories - plastics, wooded, clothes, glass, and metal for recycle purposes. Even though the weather was so bad, it couldn't stop our determination to clean up the affected  site. When the raining got heavier, the team leader decided to stop the operation for safety reasons. The operation ended around 2pm.

We washed and cleaned our attires and equipment. We had to take care of our hygiene and be self-disciplined. After a hard day, we enjoyed a good meal and had a good time with the others. 

It was a good experience to sleep in the sleeping bag and in the school gymnasium with so many people . At about 4am we were awakened by a magnitude 4 earthquake. It was scary but luckily nothing happened.

I can't believe what I saw! The power of nature is so scary and cruel.  Miyagi prefecturea place that is full of greenery and is a good spot to visit for sightseeing and yet, an unpredicted and unwelcome disaster visited them. It's time to say goodbye and it's doesn't mean the end, but it's a new beginning of our friendships.

It's not the end of the day for Tohoku and Japan, but it's a brand new start. Hand in hand, Japan can overcome any difficulties and make a difference! Don't give up hope,  the sun will rise again.
We're all with you!

ACC21 is dispatching Asian students studying in Japan to volunteer in Tohoku in order to create a form of support linking the victims with Asian peoples.

From July 29th to July 31st, 6 Asian students from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia joined the second Dispatch of Volunteers to Tohoku.

Below is a report from Mr. Phuc from Vietnam, one of the members of the second dispatch.

Participating in ACC21’s Second Dispatch of Volunteers to Tohoku

 Nguyen Thanh Phuc （Vietnam）

At the end of July I participated in volunteer activities hosted by ACC21. The site of these activities was the Tohoku region that was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami last March. We stayed at the RQ Citizens Disaster Relief Network Japan (RQ-CNJ)’s headquarters in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture with volunteers from all over Japan and carried out activities with them.

We arrived in Tome around 10:00 AM on July 30^th and after changing into the necessary clothing that the RQ-CNJ had prepared for us, we went to Koizumi, very close to Kesen-numa, and participated in work there. Koizumi is a place that suffered great devastation, with houses, roads, and even a train station being washed away by the tsunami. We helped pick up debris in the middle of the rain, but unfortunately because the rain became too strong, we had to stop working after just two hours. However, the sight of volunteers working together and having fun doing so in the middle of the rain is permanently engrained in my memory.

Afterwards, we went back to Tome and after eating dinner at the volunteer center we participated in the evening meeting. At the meeting, everyone gave a report on the activities they conducted and also actively exchanged opinions about the plans for the next day.

On the morning of the next day, because of bad weather in Koizumi, we stayed indoors and helped out there. In order to return work tools that had been lost in the tsunami back to evacuees, we cleaned each of them one at a time. It’s a tough and detailed job, but everyone was able to talk with each other while doing it, so it was fun. When afternoon came, we left Tome and returned to Tokyo via Sendai.

Picture 1: RQ Volunteer Center in Tome. Volunteers from all over Japan stay here and plan their activities together.

The site of our activities, the Tohoku region, is still recovering even though close to half a year has passed since the tsunami. In the Utatsu area temporary houses have been built very quickly, but many people are still living in evacuation centers such as schools. Unfortunately, there was no chance for us to talk with any of the evacuees this time. However, I think through our one-night stay at the volunteer center and experiencing life there, we were able to gain a sense of how difficult the evacuees’ lives are right now.

The strength of nature is really something to be feared, but I strongly believe that from now on people from all over the world can learn how to live in harmony with nature. Until now the kindness of the Japanese people has been recognized worldwide, but through these activities we were able to have that belief in the kindness of the Japanese reinforced. At the RQ Volunteer Center the necessary clothes and tools were prepared for us so that we could participate in volunteer activities. In addition, everything from the preparation of the meals to the cleaning of the toilets and the showers was orderly beyond what we could imagine.

This was a great study opportunity for me because my country is at high risk for having a disaster at some point. Also, all the students who participated were so nice and friendly and we became friends very quickly. I think to be able to volunteer with each other is a chance to throw off national boundaries and for the world to become one family.

Finally, I want to thank everyone at ACC21 who planned these volunteer activities, Ms. Kyoko Shimizu who was very kind to us, and all the students who participated with me. Thank you, everyone.

Picture 2：Team members of the 2^nd Dispatch in front of the disaster area in Minamisanriku. 

For the past ten weeks, I have been volunteering in Miyagi Prefecture. I have seen firsthand the coastal areas devastated by the tsunami, visited temporary shelters and houses, talked with internally displaced persons (IDPs), and worked with hundreds of volunteers as well as local civil groups and municipal governments.

(Ishinomaki on May 17^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

I first came to Miyagi Prefecture on April 17^th for a three-day volunteer trip to Ishinomaki as part of the Asian NGO Leadership Program(*1) hosted by the NGO Asian Community Center 21 (ACC21). Our team of five helped remove sludge in houses as well as clean school gyms so that they could be used as temporary shelters. Meanwhile, we slept outside in tents while it was still cold. On the last day, we drove along the coast side of the Ishinomaki port, and what we saw was a panorama view of a town that was completely destroyed. It was something unreal in a sense but it was definitely the reality for people along the coast who were affected by the tsunami.

(Minamisanriku on July 15^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

I came back to Miyagi again on May 11^th as a volunteer of RQ Citizens Disaster Relief Network Japan (RQ) (http://www.rq-center.net/wp/lang/en.html), a volunteer organization that started full-scale relief activities in the disaster stricken area on March 17^th. Since then I have been supporting activities of the local civic group “Egaonet” (smile network) and the Tome municipal government to assist approximately 400 women in twelve shelters in Tome, most of whom were evacuated from Shizugawa in Minamisanriku which was entirely swept away by the tsunami.

(RQ VC in Tome in Miyagi on July 17^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

The total number of volunteers, 420,000, for the first three months after the earthquake is only one third compared to the number of volunteers, 1,170,000, for the earthquake in Kobe in 1995 according to the June 19^th, 2011 edition of the Asahi Shimbun. In the case of RQ, 14,570 people in total have joined our volunteer activities not only from all over Japan but also from Korea, Thailand, Ghana, France, New Zealand and many other countries, and range from 12 to 73 years old.

(Hand massage in temporary shelter on May 25^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

So far I have visited temporary shelters 41 times distributing personal-needs questionnaires, providing goods, and carrying out events designed for comfort such as face and hand massages or haircuts specifically for women held by the local civic group “Egaonet”. This way, it is possible to hear the voices of women who are internally displaced when there are no other opportunities to do so.

(A temporary shelter in a school gym on June 4^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

According to the Miyagi prefectural government, 3,067 IDPs are still living in 60 different temporary shelters in Miyagi as of July 14^th. While this number is high, it is a dramatic decline from the peak of 320,885 IDPs in 1,183 different shelters on March 13^th, 2011 just in Miyagi. Now, 14,836 temporary houses have been built in 223 different sites and 6,926 houses are in the process of being built in 150 sites in Miyagi. The average rooms of the temporary houses are only 30 square meters and not big enough to support a family of four.

(Temporary houses in Minamisanriku on June 24^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

Temporary shelters may soon disappear when the rest of the IDPs move into the temporary houses. However, it does not mean the issues in the devastated areas will disappear. There are no jobs available for evacuees, there are cases of domestic violence (DV), some people die in solitude, single mothers are struggling to support their children, there are a number of people affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), community members are scattered throughout different evacuation centers, there are areas where the ground continues to sink, and there is a shortage of land for rebuilding. As time passes, with rubble being cleaned up and temporary houses being built, people in the unaffected areas tend to forget about the reality that the people in the affected areas are still facing. One can learn a lot more from actually being at the site than by listening to a long lecture on the subject. Now, many volunteers are expected to come to the devastated areas for the coming summer holiday. Key to helping Tohoku fully recover will be connecting people from both sides so that it won’t just be us helping them but everyone helping each other.

(Written by Megumi Ishimoto, ACC21 Volunteer Staff Based in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture, on July 20^th, 2011. Edited by Reece Scott, ACC21 Intern)

(*1) The Asian NGO Leadership Program is designed to train and educate NGO leaders for the 21^st century to work in Asia. The program trains talent to be able to collaborate and have dialogue with peoples throughout Asia, a continent with many connections to Japan. Under the current five-year plan (2009-2014), the program accepts eight applicants every year and hopes to graduate 40 people within five years.

Nine Korean nationals arrived at the local HQ of RQ Citizens Disaster Relief Network Japan (RQ) (http://www.rq-center.net/wp/lang/en.html), a volunteer organization, in Tome, Miyagi on May 23^rd. They volunteered in the Utatsu area of Minamisanriku town where most of the buildings along the coast were swept up by the Tsunami. The team, led by Mr. Kyu-Hyeon Kim, Secretary General of the NPO Korea-Japan Society & Culture Forum (www.kjforum.org), was made up of young men in their twenties. Seven out of the nine flew back to Korea after one week of volunteer work. However, two young Koreans stayed for one month.

(Minamisanriku on June 25^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

Mr. Jun-Seok Hwang (25) explained the reason why he joined the team in fluent Japanese, “I’ve been studying Japanese because I am interested in Japanese culture. Japan is my neighbor country, not a far away country. So I just wanted to help my neighbor.”

Mr. Jin-Man Seo (28yrs) commented, ”I watched the footage of the devastated areas on TV while I was in Korea, but now I saw the real disaster site with my own eyes and was surprised at how badly the town has been damaged.”

Both of them said, “The Korean team and the Japanese team worked together so we became very close. Some of us became good friends and we contact each other via email now.”

(Jun-Seok Hwang and Jin-Man Seo on March 30^th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

Mr. Kim announced that they would continue sending a team from Korea every month. A second team arrived in Miyagi on Jun 17^th. Thirteen of them volunteered for one week and flew back to Korea except two young women.

Ms. Hyun-ju Park and Ms. Sun-hee Kim have been cleaning photos that were swept up by the Tsunami and damaged by dirt and seawater. Ms. Kim said, “I just wanted to be useful for the people in pain. So I am very happy to be here.” Ms. Park said, “Japanese volunteers are so kind to us that we would like to stay here and keep working until July 20^th.”

 (Hyun-ju Park and Sun-hee Kim on June 25th, 2011, taken by Ishimoto)

A third team will arrive on July 11^th and serve as a bridge between Korea and Tohoku.

(Written by Megumi Ishimoto, ACC21 Volunteer Staff Based in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture, on June 29^th, 2011. Edited by Reece Scott, ACC21 Intern)

Our heart goes out to all the families who have lost love ones in this tragedy. After long time, first batches of temporary housing compounds were finished and people have started to move from evacuation centers to start to build their lives again. There are still many who lost the first drawing and are waiting for next compounds to be completed. And for those who lost everything by the tsunami, including livelihood, it shall be a long journey until they put their lives in order. May we all continue to help our brothers and sisters in any way possible.

Acknowledgement Letter has been sent from JPN/ACC21, also from JOICFP and CTIC to PJP.  Our collaboration continues in soridarity. 

Click here to download:

letter_of_michio_ito.pdf (620 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

letter_of_michio_ito.pdf (620 KB)

We would like to send our deepest condolence to the victims of tropical storm Bebeng and those who were affected in many ways…  We also hear about frequent quakes in Luzon and Mindanao since last March.  Here we too have felt and unfelt aftershocks almost every day.  It makes us wonder how people in evacuation shelters, own houses with makeshift repair, or in temporary housing alike withstand these afterquakes.

It has been two months since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan.  As of today, nearly 15,000 deaths have been confirmed and more than 10,000 remain listed as missing.  In Ishinomaki City, Miyagi and some other coastal communities, where the ground has sunk lower than the high tide mark after the quake, residents are still adjusting to flooding twice a day.  More than 110,000 people are still in evacuation shelters because their houses were either destroyed or lie within the exclusion zone around the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

After two months since the earthquake and tsunami, we consider now is the real start for people in affected area to begin reconstructing and rehabilitating their lives and their communities.  We wish to continue to support, accompany their efforts in one way or another.  On behalf of JPN members and organizations working for the victims, WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN for calling for fund drive and sending your donations to Japan via JPN.  JPN secretariat is now preparing to send donation to different organizations respectively as proposed earlier. 

One member visited Miyagi prefecture, her father’s hometown personally in mid-April to see our relatives and to volunteer at Shiogama city, where she was born, through the Sendai Diocese Support Center and the disaster volunteer center run by the local social welfare council.  While I was in Miyagi, on Sunday 17 April at Motoderakoji Cathedral in Sendai where the Catholic Tokyo International Center or CTIC and the Filipino community in Tokyo offered a Tagalog Mass and solidarity gathering to meet with more than 100 Filipino residents in Sendai, Natori, Tagajo, and Shichigahama in Miyagi prefecture to make sure each one of them was all right and further exchange information about situations in their towns for needs assessment.  Not only economic difficulties due to the loss of houses and/or work but emotional distress was what participants shared in a meeting.  CTIC will continue to assist them with a special focus on providing psycho-social intervention such as Tagalog hotline and counseling services other than offering regular Tagalog masses in disaster area.  We can see the group picture after the mass on the top page of CTIC site now.  http://www.ctic.jp/  We were told that recently Prelature of Infanta has also collected and sent donations to CTIC through Hiroshima Diocese.

JOICFP as well continues to send relief and needy goods for pregnant and feeding mothers and exchange information and discussions with the leaders of local midwife associations in affected prefectures for further assistance, including psychological and emotional care for both mothers and children.  Now they have very informative and inspiring video on their English site regarding their first-ever aid initiatives activities in Japan to help disaster victims.  Please see http://www.joicfp.or.jp/eng/

A JPN member, Asian Rural Institute or ARI in Tochigi also was affected and damaged by the earthquake and while they have been repairing and reconstructing their own buildings, they have sent their harvest as well as rice and other aid deliveries from their friends and supporters from all over Japan to nearby evacuation shelters and in neighboring Fukushima and Miyagi.  The new school year has started in May in Tsurukawa, Kanagawa prefecture while buildings are being reconstructed, and there will be an entrance ceremony this coming Saturday!  http://www.ari-edu.org/english/index.html

In many municipalities the first set of prefabricated temporary housing has completed and the residents started to move to their new house.  Volunteers and NGOs support them providing daily items and livingware to be able to immediately start a new life and giving hands to move from evacuation shelters to their temporary housing.  Relief NGOs that have experiences in other quake-struck areas in Japan invite persons with experience living in temporary housing to talk to new residents and share their experiences and tips to cope with living in prefabricated housing and what would help them to make a new community.

While volunteers continue to visit disaster areas to be engaged in much-needed and sometimes seemingly endless work including scraping sludge from houses and stores, house cleaning, helping soup kitchen at shelters, delivering food and relief supplies, etc. through disaster volunteer center run by local social welfare council, in Ishinomaki and Kesennuma cities, "cash for work" project has been started in April by the Tohoku Region Earthquake Relief NGO Center, an ad-hoc coalition of NGOs, LGUs, corporations and local farmer groups, etc. with secretariat in International Volunteer Center Yamagata or IVY.  This is to match victims who lost work such as damaged fishing factories workers and those who need help particularly elders who find difficulties cleaning their houses before they return home from evacuation shelter.

Many more initiatives are in progress since April, including the beginning of the fiscal year as well as school year in Japan to support mobile stores of affected family own stores, provide school buses/coasters for school children and college students for free and others to help people put their lives back in order after incurring heavy losses in the 3.11 earthquake and tsunami.

May 6 was the beginning of summer in Japanese calendar, and it’s time to prepare rice planting.  In Miyagi where nearly 13,000 ha of paddy field was flooded, 1,125 ha among the total damaged field will undergo desalting process during soil puddling and will be prepared to plant rice seedlings the end of May, according to the Kahoku Shimpo, the major local newspaper in Miyagi and Tohoku region.  The rest of more than 10,000 ha of rice filed may require several years up to ten years before farmers are able to plant.  The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan has announced the end of March that the total damage of agricultural land was 23,600 ha in six prefectures in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaragi and Chiba.

Last night at 11:32 pm Japan time, a tsunami warning for waves up to six feet was issued following a 7.4 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sendai, Miyagi.

In the large part of the Tohoku region, the electricity went off until morning and quake-stricken people who sleep at evacuation shelters or at own houses likewise woke up in alarm. A text message arrived from Sendai saying “Some plates have fallen off and been broken. No! I am just tired of these terrifying aftershocks!” There was a report that an elderly man and a woman had fainted and died from shock.

Great Hanshin Earthquake (Kobe Earthquake) in January 1995 was one of the most devastating earthquakes ever to hit Japan; more than 5,500 were killed and over 26,000 injured. It is an astonishing situation yet today in Tohoku, it still is same as the second or the third day after the main quake in Kobe; i.e. in many areas affected people are still in need of basic necessities without houses nor work, whereas mid- and long-term rehabilitation process has gradually started as municipalities began constructing provisional housing.

The last 3.11 Earthquake affected large areas in Tohoku, from Aomori in the north up to Choshi, Chiba near Tokyo along the coast of more than 500 km. In five municipalities of Sendai City, Higashi-Matsushima City, Minami-Sanriku Town, Yamamoto Town of Miyagi Prefecture, and Yamada Town, Iwate Prefecture, they have not yet tally the number of missing persons. It is expected the number of missing people of 17,000 will increase further. The local governments were affected, local red cross chapters were affected, local social welfare councils were affected, and because of the lack of management and coordination bodies, there are still leased-served communities among the affected areas. NGOs with experience in relief work abroad and NPOs that were founded after the Kobe quake to help victims of natural disasters are in the field to fill the gap but the efforts are not enough simply because disaster area is huge and damage in enormous.

In order to meet the pressing need, Japan Civil Network for Disaster Relief in East Japan, a nation-wide network was established and had the first GA in Tokyo on March 30 with representatives from 141 member organizations. It is a loose national network of currently 329 member organizations (as of April 7) donor agencies and partner corporations, to share information, coordinate activities, and provide detailed map of responses and organizations/groups operating in Tohoku, to (1) never make an area where affected people do not receive any assistance, and (2) help and give support to the last person. ACC21 has become a member, and two staff members for JPN/ACC21 joined the GA and shared information with other organizations for future collaboration.

The amount of help in terms of relief goods as well as volunteers/workforce vary considerably from one place to another, because of the road situation, not yet fully recovered railways, lack of gasoline and the distance from the municipality. Another challenge is that affected people who manage to live in one’s own houses receive no relief items and suffer from shortage of food and daily commodities, while in designated evacuation centers in accessible areas, relief goods have been delivered from all over Japan.

Particularly, elders, parents with mentally or physically challenged children, and pregnant women and nursing mothers tend to behave with modesty especially in times of disaster. They are the ones who suffer and put up with the inconvenience when everyone suffer from great damage.

JOICFP, a JPN member, who regularly runs only international operations was quick to respond to the needs of women and mothers in affected areas and started to help them, with a focus on MDG5, improving maternal health, responding to reproductive health (RH) needs, which is most often overlooked in disaster relief activities.

Their operation includes distribution of relief supplies, such as diapers, sanitary napkins, and relief clothing for women and newborns to meet their daily needs.

On March 19, the first batch of items (diapers, sanitary napkins, masks, etc.) was sent out to Iwate and Miyagi. The second batch of items were assorted and packed by some 40 volunteers. A member from JPN/ACC21 joined to engage in sorting and packing of relief goods of powdered milk, cloth diaper, diaper cover, baby sling, underwear for infants, blanket, baby food and other products, mother’s dress/blouse for breast-feeding, pajamas, underwear and other clothes, shampoo, soap, toothpastes, mask, sanitary napkins and other items that are in short supply in affected areas, which were sent off the next day by six 4-tons tracks (one to Iwate, two to Miyagi, three to Fukushima, and one to Ibaragi).

By March 31, all the items were delivered to the each prefectural center and then distributed through local midwives.

Let us listen to the voices of women in affected areas…

http://www.joicfp.or.jp/eng/tohoku_bokin/voice.html

A mother of an infant who lives in Sendai City told, “When the earthquake hit our area, it was early in the evening, and there were many mothers with small children on the street. We got panic-stricken and run about in confusion. When it started to snow, we were already in the shelter nearby. Many of the mothers look so cold because they didn’t bring anything when they left their houses.”

Another mother in Tagajo City, Miyagi said to a staff, “I heard there was a tsunami warning on the radio, so I ran to a designated evacuation center, a local high school in our neighborhood. We stayed there for two nights as the school building was isolated surrounded by water. It was an evacuation center designated by the local government but there was no stockpiles at all, even biscuits. I was surprised I believed there should be food, powdered milk, sanitary napkins and other goods for daily use.”

Having had meetings with midwives in the area, JOICFP is further going to support healthcare services for mothers and newborns in close collaboration with them who have been working very closely with the communities.

The Atlantic Magazine (US) publishes a collection of recent images (46 photos) from northeastern Japan, 14 days after the quake and tsunami on their website.

Link

New York Times has also complied a chronological photographic record (242 photos) from 3/11/2011 to 3/27/2011.

The Aftermath in Japan

Link

Earlier on Sun Mar 13, ABC News released aerial photos taken over Japan to show the scale of devastation "accross dozens of suburbs and tens of thousands of homes and businesses"

Japan Earthquake: before and after

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