{"id":6753,"date":"2018-05-07T17:04:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T08:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/?p=6753"},"modified":"2018-05-14T19:29:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T10:29:37","slug":"7-years-since-the-great-east-japan-earthquake-in-fukushima-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/archive\/6753","title":{"rendered":"7 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake in Fukushima part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of students from our Campus chapters in Kanto region visited Fukushima\u00a0prefecture for three days from March 1 st to 3 rd after seven years from the Great East Japan\u00a0Earthquake. Shingo Okawa, a freshman at Shibaura Institute of Technology, joined the\u00a0volunteer activity with a different thought from others. He was from Okuma in Fukushima\u00a0and used to live there until the earthquake occurred when he was a sixth grader. The town\u00a0of Okuma is designated by the government as an area where residents would not be able\u00a0to return for more than 5 years due to Tepco\u2019s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster.\u00a0The town is surrounded by barricades and no one can enter unless with a special\u00a0permission. Shingo decided to join the volunteering with his friends wishing to do\u00a0something for Fukushima.<\/p>\n

Graduation was just a few days ahead when Shingo, a six grader at the time, was on the\u00a0way home with his friends at 2:46pm March 11 th when the earthquake occurred. \u201cSudden\u00a0shaking struck us and streets were waving. We could not keep walking nor standing so we\u00a0crouched down. A driver of a truck which happened to be there came out of the truck and\u00a0covered us.\u201d He then walked to home and moved to Okuma General Gymnasium with his\u00a0family for evacuation.<\/p>\n

On March 12 th , the following day, his family finally got through to his grandfather who had\u00a0lived in Tomioka, Fukushima by the phone. The family evacuated to Tomioka where they\u00a0heard the hydrogen explosion of the Unit 1 of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that\u00a0occurred at 3:36pm on the day. \u201cWe suddenly heard a bomb-like sound. I was too young to\u00a0understand that it was a nuclear plant accident but a fire engine came immediately after the\u00a0sound telling us that it was dangerous to stay there and we had to run away because the\u00a0nuclear plant exploded. So my family evacuated to a gymnasium in Kawauchi village next\u00a0to Tomioka. It usually takes less than an hour but we got stuck in a massive traffic jam\u00a0caused by all the town residents trying to evacuate so it took us hours to arrive Kawauchi. I\u00a0remember that I took iodine tablets which were given to all evacuees with an instruction to\u00a0take them to prevent radiation exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n

After two to three days in Kawauchi, all evacuees were informed that they were no longer\u00a0able to return to Tomioka. \u201cWe left my grandfather\u2019s home believing that we should be able\u00a0to come back in a few days. We even left our dog at home. I\u2019d never thought that we\u00a0wouldn\u2019t be able to go back to my grandfather\u2019s home nor our home in Okuma when we\u00a0first rushed out of Okuma,\u201d said Shingo. His family stayed with relatives Tokyo and Ibaraki\u00a0and finally moved to Aizu Wakamatsu city in Fukushima where majority of people from\u00a0Okuma chose to evacuate.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Shingo and his friend met at campus chapter workcamp<\/p><\/div>\n

Shingo graduated junior high and high schools in Aizu Wakamatsu. He applied for\u00a0temporary return to Okuma to go home in October 2017 for the first time after the\u00a0earthquake. \u201cI entered university last year and joined Habitat\u2019s Campus chapter where I\u00a0experienced volunteering with my friends for the first time. I visited Sri Lanka last summer\u00a0for construction volunteer activity and came to know many issues that I wouldn\u2019t have\u00a0understood if I didn\u2019t see the situation firsthand. I wanted to go back to Okuma to see\u00a0firsthand and tell people what I saw. I thought I should be the one to tell the world what is\u00a0happening in Okuma right now.\u201d Shingo wanted to tell others that he can\u2019t take his current\u00a0life for granted. \u201cA student who came to Tokyo from other part of Japan like me would feel\u00a0it\u2019s a normal thing to return to home for holidays. But it\u2019s not for me. I wanted tell everyone\u00a0that you can take nothing for granted out of my experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He told us that he met his friend who used to go to the same elementary school as him in\u00a0Okuma for the first time after the earthquake through volunteering at campus chapter. He\u00a0also said that meeting members of Campus chapters across Japan outside his university\u00a0reminded him of appreciation towards people around him. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be the person I am\u00a0today without my family who cared me and supported me to go to university. I\u2019m also very\u00a0happy and proud of Campus chapter members who come all over from Japan to do\u00a0something for Fukushima although they had nothing to do with Fukushima in the past,\u201d he\u00a0commented. He\u2019ll become a sophomore in April. He told us that he wants to be friendly to\u00a0freshmen, like elder students were to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of students from our Campus chapters in Kanto region visited Fukushima\u00a0prefecture for three days from […]","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,46,47,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activity-reports","category-youth","category-japan","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/habitatjp.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}