Newsletter 2012 - Francis Holland School

After the Tsunami
Laura Inoue (Eastaugh)
I have lived in Japan for the last thirty years. The country is still traumatised by the
triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear explosion in Fukushima of the
middle of March. We live in an area well away from the disaster itself, but of course
watched it unfold on television. My husband Giichi, who is Japanese, has a background
in nuclear science, as well as years of experience of the dynamics of Japanese company
management and mismanagement, and as he watched what was happening on our
television screens that fateful weekend March 12/13, he was so outraged and anguished
that doing nothing was not possible. I will never ever forget the sight and sound of
him sitting by the TV shouting: “fools!” or: “incompetents!” at intervals, at what he
considered to be gross mismanagement of the nuclear crisis. A friend who rang from
London to find out whether we were all right, heard the pain and misery in his voice
when he answered the phone. He was sure there would be dire consequences for the
health of the local children somewhere down the line if something was not done, and
fairly sure that the response of the authorities would be inadequate. And so with likeminded
others in this small town of Komoro set in the beautiful Nagano mountains,
which has been shielded by Mount Asama from almost all the radiation, we set up the
Komoro Homestay Programme for mothers and children. It’s evolving as time goes
on. The first stage was the summer holidays: we needed to get as many children as
possible out of the danger zone, and we hoped other safe municipalities would be doing
the same. In the first couple of weeks we had amazing luck: we were lent two houses
and a disused university dormitory. We spent a couple of months stumbling, trying to
establish communications with those we wanted to help. Then Giichi put information
about what we were offering on a couple of websites aimed at young mothers.
That was a Thursday. On the Friday I went to meet Giichi on the West coast where
he was working, for a quiet weekend together in a small town famous for beautiful
laquer. The deluge started the first evening: applications poured in. At one point
another member of the group was receiving a telephone call every five minutes,
some of the callers in tears. We were in constant communication with him, Giichi
answering emails into the small hours. So much for the quiet weekend: clearly there
was a huge need, and a hunger for help. With agonising difficulty we selected as
many of the applications as we could manage – there were over a hundred – and
organised energetically. We could only help a few directly.
Fast forward to the second half of July, the beginning of the summer holidays in
Japan as in it in the UK, a hot Sunday afternoon. The first families from Fukushima
are about to arrive to take part in the programme we have organised to give the
children respite from the dangerous levels of radiation, and the mothers from the
stress of trying to keep children indoors, of washing everything everyday and
drying it indoors, keeping the windows shut, and from some of the worry. And
of not talking about it with their neighbours: they are encouraged to pretend that
everything is as normal. It takes courage to leave, even for the summer holidays in
this traditional “village society”, and all who come know the risks. The mothers