As the anniversary of the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of northeastern Japan approaches, some local netizens have organized a campaign on Facebook supporting the residents of Arahama community in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, an area badly hit by the double disaster.
On the page titled “Imploring the Japanese Government to Make Good Use of Taiwanese People’s Love,” the netizens have called on officials to respect the desire of Arahama residents to rebuild their homes in the place many of them have lived for generations.
The Internet campaign came in answer to a call from survivors for help after the Japanese government designated the area around Arahama a “disaster hazard zone” in December last year and ordered all inhabitants to be relocated.
Japanese architect and academic Yasuhiro Ento, who is currently visiting Taiwan, urged Taiwanese, who are no strangers to natural disasters and reconstruction work, to support a campaign by Arahama residents to garner public support for the reconstruction of their community.
Ento, the chief convener of a “yellow handkerchief” campaign for local residents, called for people to write words of support on yellow handkerchiefs and banners, which Japanese earthquake victims regard as symbols of hope, expressing their support for Arahama residents.
Hsia Chu-joe (夏鑄九), a professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate School of Building and Planning, said Taiwanese donated more than NT$4 billion (US$135 million) last year for Japanese earthquake relief work. It made no sense for Taiwanese to make such generous donations while the Japanese government treated victims so arbitrarily, he said.
“Reconstruction requires the participation of survivors,” he added.
About 170 of the 700 residents of Arahama died in the disaster. Last year, the Japanese government designated the coastal area a “disaster hazard zone” and ordered all residents relocated.
Liao Chia-chan (廖嘉展), chairman of Nantou-based New Homeland Foundation, who has visited the disaster-hit areas of northeastern Japan in person, said that Japan could learn from the experience of Taiwan. For example, the government had relocated disaster-prone villages following the devastation of the magnitude 7.6 921 Earthquake in 1999, and massive flooding and landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot on Aug. 8, 2009.
Liao said that if the people of Arahama were forced to leave the area, where many made a living fishing, they would find it even harder to survive.
One netizen, identified only as Hsu (許), cited examples of Taiwanese forced to relocate after their homes were destroyed, saying that although the relocation provided them with safer places to live, their lives had been “torn from their original culture.” As a result, the devastation wrought by the typhoon had been magnified, he said.
Hsu called on Taiwanese who made donations to the Japanese earthquake victims last year to take a greater interest in whether the victims were being properly looked after.
An exhibition of works by Japanese photographer Junichi Takahashi, which features profiles of people who lost homes, property and family members during the earthquake and tsunami, is currently being held in Taipei.
Takahashi founded “Backup Center Japan” after the earthquake to deliver aid to affected areas. He has since documented the lives of the quake victims through his photography and presented -survivors with albums of photographs as gifts in an effort to help heal their broken hearts.
Behind every photo is a heart-touching story like the one of Chieko Yamane, whose home — which was rebuilt by her parents after a tsunami more than 40 years ago — was badly damaged by the largest earthquake and tsunami ever recorded in Japan.
After deciding to raze the house in which she lived for more than four decades, Yamane wrote on a wall: “Home full of memories. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Despite her sadness at bidding farewell to the old house, she still smiled while telling the photographer that her “love of the sea” had not changed a bit, despite the tsunami that destroyed her home.
See JAPAN’S on Page 9
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS