Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) communique on the Northeastern Pacific earthquake and tsunami
March 16, 2011
Kameya Yasuo
Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) secretariat
Sinji 1-5-26-101, Wakabayasi Ward, Sendai City

Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) is to act on the following propositions:

1) The most urgent task is to establish the safety of the membership at the moment.

2) All the members should maintain their lives by themselves for the moment and secure available rice, fuel gas, stoves, kerosine, etc. in preparation for relief works toward the sufferers.

3) There are three kind of sufferers: tsunami, earthquake and nuclear-disaster evacuees.

4) Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) is to set up its relief donation account and issue appropriate requests for relief items.

We request our friends all over Japan to give due consideration to the following necessities:

1) The top-priority relief items are medical supplies and nursing-care goods. After those items, all kinds of daily-life goods should be handed to the tsunami evacuees. Please, press the government, prefectures and local municipalities to respond to the urgent needs of evacuation sites and evacuees.

2) Large-scale retail stores should be pressed to dispatch their goods and sales workers together to the stricken areas.

3) Workers of the food industry should demand their firms to step up production and dispatch the products to the stricken areas.

4) Prefectural Zenrokyo (NTUC) organizations should press their respective prefectures to release parts of emergency stocks for the stricken areas.

5) In regard to the lack of gasoline and kerosine, oil companies should pressed to release the emergency stocks for the stricken areas.

6) Lots of tank lorries and LP-gas lorries have been damaged on the tsunami-overrun trunk roads, and numerous transport workers lost their lives. We request transport workers to press their firms to intensify relief-transport activities.

7) Dispatched fire brigades and electrical engineering groups are working night and day under the severe condition of gasoline and kerosine shortage, and those dispatching prefectures and municipalities should be pressed to strengthen their backup supports to the dispatched.

8) All the harbors were overrun by the tsunami in Miyagi prefecture and other northeastern coastal prefectures. The Sendai airport is filled with 2-meters-high sediment. Reopening of the JR Tohoku-Shinkansen (Northeastern Bullet Train line) and older Tohoku Main Line (which are both inland railway lines from Tokyo to northern most Aomori) might take one month or more, and reopening of the JR Joban Line and other jont-public-and-private-venture railways would take several months. Restoration of town-gas supply may take one or two months due to the damages of the gas plants. Distribution of electricity has recovered at about a half of Sendai city, and water supply is recovering slowly, too.

Under those conditions, we will make our frank, concrete material/financial requests to our friends, as soon as we have finalized our check of safety-and-suffering situation of the Zenrokyo (NTUC) membership.

9) Last but least, the dreadful situation is unfolding at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station, and we think that there may be a critical situation which demands our emergency relief activities. If such situation arises, we will consult with our Fukushima co-workers and make urgent requests to you.

You can send donations via Europe solidaire sans frontières (ESSF), Europe in Solidarity Without Borders :

Cheques
cheques to ESSF in euros only to be sent to:
ESSF
2, rue Richard-Lenoir
93100 Montreuil
France

Bank Account:
Crédit lyonnais
Agence de la Croix-de-Chavaux (00525)
10 boulevard Chanzy
93100 Montreuil
France
ESSF, account number 445757C

International bank account details :
IBAN : FR85 3000 2005 2500 0044 5757 C12
BIC / SWIFT : CRLYFRPP
Account holder : ESSF