To our friends and supporters

April 1, 2011

Yasuo Kameya: Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) Eastern-Japan-Great-Earthquake Countermeasures Commission

We’d like to express our heartfelt appreciation to our Japanese and international friends for your solidarity support and sympathetic encouragement to us. Thank you very much.

It is three weeks since the Eastern-Japan great earthquake, and our situation is right now as follows:

In Miyagi prefecture and its Sendai City, Iwate prefecture, and the inland parts of Fukushima prefecture, water, electricity and gas services have been restored considerably, daily lives are returning to normal gradually, and the shopping queues, which had become common phenomena after the earthquake, are disappearing, although there are many places where restoration is delayed due to ground cracks and other damages caused by the earthquake.

Meanwhile, in the tsunami-stricken Pacific coastal areas of the northeastern three prefectures, searching for missing persons, which now numbers about 20,000, and the restoration of damaged roads, water supply, electricity distribution, telephone system, et cetera have not been proceeding well, in spite of the utmost efforts of the dispatched fire fighters, Self-Defence-Forces soldiers, prefectural and municipal workers, policemen, teachers, stricken-firms related workers, the disaster-stricken municipal workers and the evacuees themselves.

Along the Pacific coast of Eastern Japan, towns and villages have become appalling scenes. Residents’ houses have been destroyed, and rice paddies and vegetable fields are covered by salty sand, seaweeds, water and oil. Hospitals, schools, communication facilities, banks, local industries, factories and harbors remain to be devastated in all the tsunami-stricken areas.

The deaths and missing persons due to the earthquake and tsunami top 29,000, and there are about 200,000 evacuees, including 80,000 of Miyagi prefecture, 42,000 of Iwate prefectures and 30,000 of Fukushima prefecture.

Moreover, there are more than 100,000 evacuees, including those “voluntary” ones, due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and they are obliged to have difficult lives at various facilities of evacuation in Fukushima and other prefectures. The nuclear disaster has obstructed the efforts to search for missing persons within a 30-kilometer range. A large number of Fukushima-prefecture residents are deprived of their living places and forced to be confronted with extreme difficulties at evacuation facilities far away from their hometowns.

Up to now, our Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) has prioritized the safety/whereabouts confirmation of its constituent members and their families, while delivering heating oil to old-aged or other pinched households and electric heaters to those households with babies, and, in the area of Ishonomaki city, Miyagi prefecture, carrying out clearance of those houses flooded due to the tsunami and conveying dynamos to those evacuation facilities without electricity.

Besides, the executive committee chairman Takahashi and one of the committee members, Ohashi, of the Railway Industrial Workers Union (Northeastern-NTUC constituent union) lost their dwellings through the tsunami, and they have rented apartments respectively, leaving their evacuation sites: the both have been able to start from scratch with daily living necessaries provided by the Miyagi Zenrokyo (Miyagi NTUC) membership.

Our Countermeasures Commission is to dispatch its task group for confirmation of the safety and whereabouts of our old friends and their families in Watari-cho of Miyagi prefecture and Souma City and Minami-Souma City of Fukushima prefecture.

Now we can purchase relief items at Sendai and other local cities, and we are to switch over to a new scheme; under which our Tohoku Zenrokyo (Northeastern NTUC) Countermeasures Commission will procure necessary items for its relief activities with the fund contributed by our friends and supporters.

We call on our friends and supporters to send your on-the-spot-observation delegation of two or three persons to Sendai: we can accommodate up to four persons. Please consult with our Countermeasures Commission on the schedule.

Once again, we thank you for your solidarity supports, looking for further support and cooperation.