Mr. Yoshio Teraoka, Associate General Secretary of Kumamoto YMCA who has been serving at Sendai YMCA Volunteer Support Center as the first support staff arranged by the National Council of YMCAs of Japan from June through August, came to deliver messages from the students of Isshin Elementary School in Kumamoto to the children of Nobiru Elementary School in Higashimatsushima. He also brought a young staff member, Mr. Taishi Inomata to see the current situation of the Tsunami-affected areas by his own eyes to help boost the support effort at Kumamoto YMCA.  On Tuesday 1/24, Mr. Ohmura and myself from the
Volunteer Support Center took them to the Older People’s Facilities by the
coast in Yamamoto-cho where over 80 people had lost lives in Tsunami, Yuriage
District in Natori City, then to Arahama District in Sendai. The coastal areas
are still far from recovery: removal of debris and demolishing destroyed
structures are mostly completed, yet nothing has been built and there is no
sign of human activity ten months after the disaster, indicates the magnitude
of the destruction. On Wednesday 1/25, I took them to Nobiru Elementary
School at their newly built temporary school building in Higashi-matsushima.
Principle Ms. Kijima shared with us the current conditions and challenges of
the school, students, and their community, then took us to 2nd
grader’s classroom. When Mr. Teraoka handed the messages and drawings from the
2nd graders of Isshin Elementary School to the class leaders,
students came up with a lot of interesting questions about Kumamoto. They loved
the messages. After our visit, we went to the destroyed school building of
Nobiru Elementary School near coast, where the gym was the designated
evacuation center by city and over 100 people, students and the residents in
the community, lost their lives by tsunami gushed into the gym on 3/11.  |
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