Glimpse of Reconstruction
Jun Yamada
Ambassador, Deputy Chief of Mission
In August, during my official home leave, I had a chance to visit Ofunato city in Iwate prefecture. I joined a group of Japanese volunteers who made one-day trip from an inland area to the Pacific coast city to help out with reconstruction efforts.
The area was still full of dreadful scars of enormous tsunami, but what impressed me most was the utterly resilient spirit and cool but very dignified resolve to overcome this unprecedented calamity, which was noticeable in the faces of local people.'
Near the Port - Traces of Total Devastation
Other fellow Japanese citizens are not sitting idly. Apart from our group, countless other volunteers were gathering from all over Japan. Some of them traveled a long way (more than 1500 km) from Kyushu, the southernmost of bigger Japanese islands. Such an expression of solidarity, often coming from abroad, too, is truly essential to support the morale of those who suffered.
A Hotel Miraculously withstood the Tsumani Wave
It will be a long and painful process to completely rebuild the life and prosperity for the local communities, but as an old Japanese saying puts it, “one can, indeed one should transform disaster into a new blessing”
PS: According to the Japanese media, all the people in the destroyed coastal cities in Iwate
prefecture have been assigned temporary homes as of August 31. At long last, they do not have to endure the austerity of living in the make-shift, communal shelters any longer.
Washed-up boats
Fatally damaged Building
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