Blog: On the ground in Japan

• One year anniversary: Japan earthquake

  Wednesday, 7 March 2012

  Hideaki Nakagawa was being interviewed for a role at World Vision Japan on the day of the 11 March 2011 earthquake.  Now an employee, he was Team Leader –Community Kitchens Team for the meal preparation spaces established at evacuation centres for earthquake and tsunami survivors in north-east Japan....

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• Six months after tsunami in Japan, survivors beginning to laugh again

  Thursday, 3 November 2011

  It was the laughter that surprised me. Visiting a displacement camp in Miyako City today, I was told to expect the rows of white, pre-fabricated temporary shelters that survivors have already been living in for three months. I was told that 30-40 percent of the affected were elderly. ...

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• I’ve never seen anything quite on the scale of Japan’s emergency response

  Wednesday, 30 March 2011

  Chris Webster is a Communications Officer for World Vision’s Global Rapid Response Team. Here, he writes from Miyagi Prefecture in Japan.
  
  It’s just gone 7am and an aftershock shakes the building awake. This one is big and lasts for maybe 30 seconds.
   
  It’s more than two weeks ...

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• A week since March 11, people who survived return to Arahama town

  Monday, 21 March 2011

  Mitsuko Sobata, Advocacy & Communications Officer, World Vision Japan
  Today, we visited Arahama town which was severely hit by the tsunami. It's a coastal town and just 10-20 minutes away from Sendai City by car. The tsunami washed away everything here including houses, cars, trees, and people. Hundreds ...

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• Video Update: Snowing in Minami Sinraku

  Friday, 18 March 2011

  Freezing temperatures and fresh snowfall are adding to the problems facing survivors of Japan's earthquake and tsunami. Kenjiro Ban, Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Manager with World Vision Japan, surveys the devastation in the town of Minami Sinraku, which was laid to waste by the tsunami.

  Watch the video ...

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• Mr Muraoka, 60, shares his story of loss

  Thursday, 17 March 2011

  Mitsuko Sobata, Communications and Advocacy Officer for World Vision Japan, offers this insight:

  I was at Minami Sanriku, a town severely hit by the tsunami next to Tome. Everything was washed away and I cannot even begin to describe my feelings. "It's hard for me to explain. I ...

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• Eyewitness to the disaster zone: 'It was so quiet'

  Wednesday, 16 March 2011

  

  Mitsuko Sobata is the Communications and Advocacy Officer for World Vision Japan. This is an account of her time in the heart of the devastated quake zone on the northeastern coast.

  We’d seen the pictures before we left Tokyo, of course, but standing there, the scale of the ...

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• Video Update: First impressions in Sendai

  Tuesday, 15 March 2011

  Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs manager with World Vision Japan, Kenjiro Ban, reports from Sendai, Japan - the hardest hit area after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami. World Vision assessment teams continue to talk with survivors and determine the greatest needs.
  Watch the video now

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