一般財団法人　連帯　東北・西南　RENTAI　TOHOKU-SEINAN

We held the 4^th Symposium on Self-Supporting Efforts with Ms Mieko Osanai as a main speaker at Senmaya International Club.

Prominent scriptwriter, Ms Osanai was born in Tsurumi district in Yokohama, Kanagawa. Her debut is "The Leftover Happiness", one of the episodes of NHK TV drama series "TV Reserved Seat" broadcasted on February 2, 1962. Her later drama series including "San-nen B-gumi Kimpachi Sensei (Mr Kimpachi of Class B, Year 3)" and "Gosan (Miscalculation)" Series ("Oya to Ko no Gosan (Family Miscalculation)", "Hubo no Gosan (Parents' Miscalculation)" etc.) are based on her philosophy on education and child raising and, eventually made her a well-known figure in the educational circle. It was interesting for us audience to know the story of "Kimpachi Sensei" was not fictional but based on her own experiences. In fact, she made her thoughts and opinions voiced by the protagonist, Mr Kimpachi.

n August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait causing the outbreak of the Gulf War, Ms Osanai and other 6 volunteers went to Jordan and helped with the relief efforts at a refugee camp. This led them to form JIRAC (Japan International Relief Action Committee). During the speech, she went into detail about her experiences in Kurdish refugee relief at the border of Iran and Iraq in 1991, and support activities she joined with university students for Cambodian repatriated refugees at the border of Cambodia and Thailand from 1992 to 1993.

After the relief efforts in Cambodia were completed, Ms Osanai realised the need for building schools for children, and established "the School Building Committee for Cambodian Children" as a part of JIRAC on September 15th, 1993. The committee was reorganised as a membership-based organisation and renamed to "JHP School Building Committee" in April 1997. The number of schools they built has reached as many as 317.

However, she questioned the meaning of only constructing school buildings, and attempted to provide general educational programmes. Unfortunately, the attempt was denied by the Cambodian government except her involvement in music and art education. As part of her efforts, she sends musical instruments such as melodicas and treadle organs to Cambodia, fosters musical teachers and hosts musical contests. Also she assists art teachers to develop their skills, organises touring exhibitions and provides educational materials for art classes.

She also dispatches young Japanese volunteers including university students to Cambodia with an aim to promote global civic education. Those who participated in the project will learn some wisdom of living which they may not have a chance to encounter while studying in Japan, such as woodworking. Through accomplishing hard work together, young people will be able to acquire true friendship and she strongly enhances the importance of such activities. One of the students who experienced the volunteer work decided to become a journalist after graduation and is now a photographer at NHK. Another has quitted NHK and joined BBC. These people are now role models for student volunteers. She emphasised that the volunteer activities with students also enable her to learn a lot of things and create a large social circle.

● Through the Symposium

"This is the first time for me to visit Senmaya, but feel oddly familiar as the landscape of the area somehow resembles that of Cambodia", said Ms Osanai at the beginning of the Symposium. She, whose zodiac sign is the horse, felt a sense of affinity with people in Senmaya, a town known for the folk story that the famous medieval worrier, Minamoto Yoshitsune's horse, Tayuguro, was born in the area.

At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Ms Osanai and other volunteer members who worked with her in Cambodia rushed over to Tohoku with 1,000 packets of pot noodles donated by an actor, Mr Tsunehiko Watase, who was then in Kyoto.

The board chairperson, Mr Yasuhiko Sata, made a speech paying respect to her tremendous efforts for the past 25 years to collect a huge amount of funds to construct numerous schools. Her projects received empathy from many people and the donation reached some 2 billion yen in total. Though Rentai Tohoku Seinan has been providing assistance to the victims' self-supporting efforts, Mr Sata also expressed his wish to contribute to the revitalisation of depopulated villages in Tohoku region. He mischievously suggested Ms Osanai to write a drama set in Senmaya to cheer up the townsfolks.

At the dinner party after the Symposium, the participants were free to talk with the guest speaker and enjoyed the rare moment. Ms Osanai emphasised that young people should not be stuck in the room studying only but connect with people through volunteer activities. "By such experiences, they will be able to mature as a person", said the scriptwriter.

On October 12^th(Sun), we served "Tomodachi Curry®" at the harvest festival held at "Fureai Kizuna Suiden Gambatta(Rice Paddies Gambatta for Strong Community Bonding)" and shared the delightful time in harvesting our own food together

Council houses for employment-boosting in Tokuda district are now used as temporary houses for those affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in Kesennuma and Minamisanriku. In June this year, the residents in these temporary houses and local people got together and planted the Gambatta rice paddies and here came the time to gather crops. This year is the 4^th year for locals and evacuees to harvest rice together.

Introduced by Mr Hiroshi Senda, the chairperson of the Fujisawa-Town Neighbourhood Community Association, we provided Tomodachi Curry® at the harvest festival last year as well. This year, we were requested to serve curry for about 100 people. It was very generous of the event organiser to provide us chicken and vegetables for the curry.

At the event site, thanks to the people of Fujisawa Town who helped us making curry, the meals were ready nice and quick. The pot keeper was Mr Masayoshi Sugawara, the former town mayor of Hiraizumi Town, who came all the way from Hiraizumi with his wife to give us a hand.

After finishing the harvest, about 100 people gathered at the event site and started to have lunch. Apart from our Tomodachi Curry®, many local people brought home-prepared food and we all had a great time.

This was the second time for us to join the festival. Before the meal, we were given an opportunity to introduce our activities as Rentai Tohoku Seinan. Hopefully we could let people know more about what activities we are being engaged in the disaster affected areas, especially why we serve Tomodachi Curry®. Through this event, we hope that we were able to help strengthening friendship between disaster victims and local people in some way.

On Sunday, June 22^nd, we provided Tomodachi Curry® at Shizu River Shizen-no-Ie Temporary Housing Complex in Minamisanrikucho, Minami-Motoyoshi County, Miyagi Prefecture and had a chance to communicate with the residents.

We held the event at this temporary housing complex through our relationship with Mr. Takahiro Inomata, the Executive Director of Minamisanriku Town Council of Social Welfare, who had given a lecture at the Symposium of Self-supporting Reconstruction held in Tokyo on March 11^th, 2014. We tried to realize his hopes, who mentioned that "the road to recovery is yet to be seen in Minamisanrikucho. The awareness on the affected areas will steadily weaken as the memories of the disaster fade away throughout Japan", and that he wishes "the realities and the current situations of these affected areas be understood by as many people as possible and would like to request continuous support."

We asked the residents to help us in the meeting room of the temporary housing complex where we used as the venue of the event, starting with the preparation first thing in the morning. Our purpose was to have friendly chats starting from the preparation stage. Several elementary school girls helped us cut the vegetables and uplifted the atmosphere in the room, and we were happy to see that people were able to chat with our staff as well.

Mr. Hideo Sato, the dairy farmer (Senmaya) who had supported us since we began our activities and provided us with milk for the chai to serve with Tomodachi Curry®, unfortunately has recently withdrawn from the dairy business. As such, Mr. Nobuo Sudo, our new acquaintance, provided us with 20 L of fresh milk free of charge.

Our staff continued to give instructions and explanations on the procedures after the ingredients in the pan were on the stove, and asked the residents to assist us. However, this is the time where the children gets bored, having have to wait. For this event, our Representative Director brought lots of firecrackers and balloons, and played with the children. In addition, the children asked to play tag and the game began with some of our staff joining in the fun. We leave it to you to guess who won.

Tomodachi Curry® was finally ready before noon, but since the meeting room was not big enough, we asked to have a big tent outside and had the residents enjoy the meal with lots of conversation in an outdoor-activity environment. Thankfully the light rain we had during preparation had stopped by then and we had a good time, but unfortunately we could not find a place where many people could come and sit together.

Some benches were set in the corridor outside the housing complex near where we had our tent, and some people who could not find a space in the tent enjoyed the meal sitting on these benches.

Mr. Ikuo Takeyama, the Representative of Kamaya Memorial Building Committee, and Mr. Mitsuru Hatakeyama, the Director of Okago Christian Resource Center, who had given lectures at the Symposium held on March 11^th joined us in the event. Dr. Shun Yonekawa of Yonekawa Clinic, whom our Foundation staff Tahir is close to, came from Nagoya to join us as well.

Mr. Onodera, the President of Nikko Fine Mecc Co., Ltd. in Senmaya provided us with blueberries harvested at his private residence. The blueberries went very well with Tomodachi Curry® and everyone loved this as dessert.

We held this event after hearing Mr. Inomata's words that "the road to recovery is yet to be seen in Minamisanrikucho", and we feel for the hardships the residents of the temporary housing complex must be going through.

We sincerely wish the best for the residents at Shizen-no-Ie Temporary Housing Complex.

On Saturday, June 21^st in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, we had a chance to speak with Mr. Yuichi Yonezawa, CEO of the company Yonezawa Shokai.

He had been running a packaging goods store in the center of Rikuzentakata until the day of the Earthquake, March 11^th, 2011, and now he continues his business in a temporary store.

During the Symposium of Self-supporting Reconstruction "Toward the light" held on March 11, 2014 organized by our Foundation, it was mentioned that "it seems that the removal of the affected buildings and ships of the area is being considered for psychological reasons, but if people wish the memories of the disaster to be linked to the safety of the next generation, then those hurtful things are specifically the ones which need to be preserved." Mr. Yonezawa himself decided to keep the building where he barely escaped death from the tsunami for the next generation.

On March 11^th, 2011, the day the Earthquake hit, Mr. Yonezawa evacuated on to the rooftop of a three-story steel-reinforced building. However, the tsunami even reached where he was, and he only just survived by climbing on the chimney part of the building. Sadly, his parents and brother who escaped to a different place could not make it.

Mr. Yonezawa put a sign saying "water level of the tsunami" on the chimney where he was saved, with hopes that the disaster would not fade away and that no lives would be lost when the next tsunami comes. He says that as someone who miraculously survived can do now is to live a full life each day, without leaving any regret, and keep promises made with others no matter what.

A new Rikuzentakata Station is to be constructed near the building Mr. Yonezawa owns, and from the side of the tracks, the town itself is planned to be raised up eight meters high. However, Mr. Yonezawa's building is outside this designated area and fortunately, for the time being, it will be able to stay where it is.

We shall keep Mr. Yonezawa's wish in our hearts.

On Sunday, April 27^th, we provided Tomodachi Curry® at the Temporary Housing Complex in Kahoku Sandanbashiri, Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture and enjoyed a pleasant time talking with the residents.

A number of residents of this temporary housing complex lived near Okawa Elementary School where a number of students were lost due to the tsunami, and our second event here came out of our relationship with Mr. Takeyama who also lost his family in this area.

In our previous event we had a volunteer Chinese chef in our team, so we cooked and provided Chinese dishes. This time we did everything at the venue in the meeting space in the temporary housing, starting with the very first preparation in the morning, and asked the residents to help us. Our purpose was to encourage friendly conversations with the residents from the preparation stage. The residents began helping us from around 8 a.m., and we were happy to have been able to chat with them by the time we took a break.

We asked the residents to continue helping us after we started to cook, with our staff Tahir explaining the procedure. Just frying the onions takes almost an hour and is a much harder work than one might imagine, so we asked the residents to take turns with the cooking.

Tomodachi Curry® was finally ready before noon. Our objective for this event was for everyone to enjoy preparing the curry, and eating and talking with the others in the meeting space, so we limited providing the curry to those who were able to eat at the meeting space. We were very sorry to ask not to take the curry if they wished to eat in their private rooms. However, we sincerely wish everyone to understand that our hope was to have more people come to the meeting space and enjoy talking with others while eating the curry.

We asked some other guests to join us at the meeting space: Mr. Takahiro Inomata, the Executive Director of the Minamisanriku Town Council of Social Welfare, and Mr. Mitsuru Hatakeyama, the Director of Okago Christian Resource Center, both of whom gave lectures at the Symposium held on March 11th, Dr. Kenichi Shoji, the Administrative Director of Shoji Naika Ichoka who assisted us when we donated the Angel Statue at the school ground site of Okawa Elementary School, and Dr. Takayuki Chida, and the Director of Kawasaki Family Clinic from whom we have been renting the office since the beginning of our activities.

We heard that the construction of permanent houses has been delayed again, and the residents would have to wait until 2017. The news left a strong impression on us and it hurt us to think of what the residents would have to continue to bear with.

We sincerely wish the best for the residents at the Temporary Housing Complex in Kahoku Sandanbashiri.