Volunteers Help

Missing the credibility to the governmental authority, local communities in the devastated area of the Great East Japan Earthquake are much more relying on the help of volunteers. Just after the earthquake occurred two year ago, a number of people went into the area to feed refugees, to clean up the houses or encourage depressed people who had lost their families. Now, they are doing what the government is in short of. The disaster may become a momentum for Japanese society to be a bottom-up system.

Volunteers are generally work for emergency relief in disasters. The fact that local communities needed help of volunteers showed the greatness of the disaster. Many local governments built temporary houses for people who lost houses to live. Most of them are not well-to-do enough for rebuilding their houses, and have to live there until the government build new permanent houses, which construction process is delaying due to the lack of land for that.

The important job is to support their life in temporary houses. The residents need to go to supermarket, medical clinic or office of public service. Most of them, however, are too old to walk for a long distance or to drive a car. To make them live ordinary life and avoid unnecessary depression, volunteers help their transportation using cars. That is one of the examples of what government does not do.

In Fukushima area where process of reconstruction is slow due to the contamination of radioactive materials, volunteers are still needed to remove debris or to clean up houses. College students, businessmen or housewives are gathering from everywhere in Japan and work for families or small businesses to resume their ordinary life. The level of the radiation around there is relatively so high that they are advised to reconsider volunteering, if they get nervous on it. The removing mud from garage, for example, becomes to be physical labor in thick, supposedly contaminated, dust.

Those volunteers are not motivated by their frustration on what government do or do not, but by their compassion to the sufferers. They drive cars, reserve hotels and feed themselves at their own cost. Feeling of responsibility for their fellow citizen drives them to the volunteering.

For a long time after the World War II, the progress of Japanese society has been dependent on the effort for common wealth. The Japanese for the first time saw the limit of the governmental power. True patriots worry about the future of this nation and take action for preserving life and property of the citizens.