Japan’s tsunami: Helping ‘overlooked’ survivors

The IRC funded road repairs so that people with disabilities could reach vocational skills programs at Asunaro Home, in the heights above tsunami-devastated Rikuzentakata. Kazue Saijou (standing, far right) manages Asunaro Home. She joined Asunaro staff and participants for a photo with packets of dried fruit and other ingredients that were donated by AAR, one of three Japanese aid organizations supported by the IRC. The donation has enabled Asunaro to continue the sales of organic snacks that help fund its work and provide income for disabled tsunami survivors.

Photo: AAR

I am visiting the Asunaro Home, a low, white building perched on a small mountain above Rikuzentakata -- one of the worst-hit cities in Japan’s devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.  Established seven years ago, the facility offers people with autism and other mental disabilities opportunities to build vocational skills and earn an income.  It’s one of many local social service agencies supported by the Association for Aid and Relief Japan (AAR), one of three Japanese aid groups funded by the IRC. 

“Disabled and elderly people are often the ones who get left behind in emergencies,” says Mariko Aoki, AAR’s program coordinator.  She says AAR targets its aid and relief efforts to support them because their special needs are often overlooked.

More than half of the people served by Asunaro lost their homes in the disaster and have been living in school gymnasiums and other evacuation centers.  

“Life in the centers with hundreds of other people is very constricting and unsettling,” says Kazue Saijou, Asunaro’s director. “Asunaro is a safe place for people with disabilities to interact with one another.”

Just inside the building is an airy room with large windows and traditional tatami mats.  Some 30 disabled people come to work here every day, making tea bags and bamboo-paper stationery by hand.  They also bake organic treats such as apple bread, cookies and yuzu (Japanese citrus) cake.  Many have become expert at challenging jobs, such as sorting through tiny tea leaves, which require real concentration and patience.  

Before the quake, the snacks and crafts they produced were sold from a vending truck at local parks and train stations, generating income that helped Asunaro to provide its services.  Now the facility doesn’t have enough money to continue operation.  

Although Japan’s defense forces deliver clean water to the facility each day for drinking and washing, Asunaro is not recognized as an official evacuation center -- so it has received no emergency financial assistance.  In order to keep it afloat in the aftermath of the disaster, AAR is providing basic supplies as well as dried fruit and other baking ingredients. Now Asunaro is beginning to make and sell its snacks again.  In the long run, AAR hopes to support Asunaro with marketing opportunities that will help it find new customers for its products beyond Rikuzentakata.  “The people who come here to work deserve all the help they can get,” says AAR’s Ms. Aoki.

Working with AAR, the IRC funded repairs of the roads that lead up to Asunaro as well as the facility’s parking lot, which were badly damaged in the earthquake.  “The cracks were large enough to fit an adult,” says Asunaro’s Kazue Saijou. “We were very worried about the safety of everyone.”  

When it was unsafe to open the facility for the participants to come every day, Ms. Saijou used to visit them in the evacuation centers. They would plead with her to let them come back.  “Now that the road has been fixed,” she says, “Asunaro is open for everybody once again.”

Ms. Saijou says that it was also important for her staff – some of whom found shelter at Asunaro after losing their own homes in the disaster – to be able to get back to work.  “It is also a way for all of us to restore normality and slowly move on with our lives,” she told me. 

She says she’s learned a lot from the people she serves.  

“When I started working at Asunaro, I didn’t know how to enjoy life,” she says. “These are people with pure, happy hearts who don’t think twice to be kind.”

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