Transcriber: Rebekah Kobayashi Hyatt Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Good afternoon. My name is Chiyomi Kobayashi.
I belong to the seminar
that's led by Professor Iwasaki in the Faculty of Humanities,
Department of English Language and Culture.
Today, I'd like to talk about my volunteer experience
in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture.
Since last October,
my seminar mates and I have been going to Ishinomaki city
and the surrounding areas as volunteer workers,
taking care of senior citizens and children living in temporary housing.
Please look at the map.
You can see Ishinomaki, north of Sendai.
Ishinomaki was the city which had the largest number of casualties
after the March 11th disaster.
In this presentation, I will talk about my volunteer experience:
what I did, saw, found and felt
about the state in which people live in the devastated areas.
I will also talk about how to help the people in Tohoku.
I will share some pictures that I took,
and I hope you will be able to learn more
about the reality people are facing in Tohoku.
Every month since last October, three students and Professor Iwasaki
have been visiting Ishinomaki city to help people.
We have been taking turns to go there.
So far, we have been there nine times,
and 23 students in total have been participating in this program.
We stayed there for five days on average.
The main part of our volunteer work is visiting temporary housing
in Ishinomaki with our volunteer-maker organization, called Cannus,
which consists of professional nurses, clinical psychotherapists and doctors.
When I arrived in Sendai by ferry for the first time,
I thought that the area was so terrible.
It looked like World War II.
It looked like World War II, like a photo of Tokyo after the war.
How could this have ever happened?
I felt that it was impossible for Tohoku to completely recover.
My mind became confused, and I just cried.
I couldn't think of anything.
In Ishinomaki, the children had lost their playground.
Instead, temporary housing had been built.
This is Kadowaki Elementary School.
This is a place where a lot of children used to play around.
But the tsunami deprived the Ishinomaki children of the place
where most of their important memories came from.
Also, many of them had lost
their family members, relatives, and friends.
They lost not only their playground, but also important people in their lives.
As a result, because of the disaster, one mother and one doctor told me
that these children closed their hearts and minds.
Every day we call the children to a meeting room in a temporary house,
and try to let them communicate with each other and make friends.
We played with them by coloring pictures,
doing kamishibai picture card shows,
playdough and other organized kids games.
We tried to let them be as active as possible,
but some of them looked as if they were waiting for a chance
to burst out and run around.
The first day they were very quiet.
But after playing with us, they became more active.
On the second and third day, they became even more excited.
Only during the last two days,
they withdrew into themselves because they knew we were leaving.
One child caught my attention more than the others.
She taught me something very important
about the reality people are facing in Tohoku.
From her, I learned that the tsunami not only destroyed houses and communities,
it also put pressure on families.
The child told me things that she couldn't say to her mom.
She said to me,
"My best friend had to move to a faraway city with her family.
I feel very lonely, but I did not want to tell my mom how I feel,
because she will feel even more pain."
When I heard this, I didn't know what to say.
So we continued playing.
I realized that she could say these things only to volunteer workers like me.
Do you know why?
That's because she didn't have a close relationship with me.
Because I'm a stranger.
So she was free to open her heart.
Even a small child like her
was going through very difficult experiences
that even adults have difficulty managing.
People in temporary housing areas have difficulty creating a community.
They are not originally from the same -
Because they are not originally from the same community.
They have to build their relationships from the start.
The Cannuses worried about stories like this in temporary housing areas.
Every morning, we have the Cannus staff take the elderly people's blood pressure,
and we also ask them about their physical condition.
This was also to prevent stories like this among senior citizens.
These were the two activities I was mainly involved in.
From this, I realized that what I heard in the media before coming
and the reality I was seeing were two different things.
I needed to experience the reality in Ishinomaki firsthand.
Firsthand to really understand what was going on.
I saw people suffering and their desperation.
These memories will stay with me forever.
In conclusion,
I don't think you have to be an expert in a particular field to help.
Anybody can help.
I'm a student, and I was able to help nonetheless.
Even now, one-and-a-half years later,
there are still thousands of people who need support from volunteer workers.
However, if you look at the graph, you can see that the number
of volunteer workers in Tohoku is decreasing.
But the people living in Tohoku that I have met have told me
they still need support from volunteer workers
and everyone who can help.
That's reality.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)