Reconstruction Goes On

On 2:46 p.m., the Royal Couple, national leaders including Prime Minister and around a thousand of families offered silent prayer for the victims in Great East Japan Earthquake five years ago at a theater in Tokyo on Friday. According to the survey of National Police Agency, 15,894 people died in the disaster, 2,561 are still missing, and 3,410 has died these five years caused by the impact of the earthquake. Reconstruction is still ongoing.

In the ceremony, Emperor Akihito made a memorial remark. “It’s five years since then. Everyone went through many hardships together and kept on making efforts toward reconstruction. However, in the suffered place and homes in evacuation, a number of people are spending hard times,” said Akihito. “For each person in hardship not to be left behind and get back to normal life as soon as possible, it is necessary for the people to be united in heart,” encouraged him.

The speech of Shinzo Abe was as political as usual. “Many people in suffered place still spending days with restrictive situation. There are people who cannot get back home after the nuclear accident. Even in this situation, though in a step-by-step manner, reconstruction is stably making progress,” appealed Abe. Abe insisted on building a country defensive against natural disaster. But, many people realized that his disaster-proof nation meant building infrastructure, such as great walls along the coast, blinding people to ocean view.

For the families of victims, the disaster is not someone’s unhappiness. Hisato Yamamoto had the last conversation with her father in the morning of March 11^th five years ago. She is proud of him to have gone to the port to shut seawall for saving his town. “Embracing a lot of words gifted by families and friends, I’m working hard to be a nurse and spend every precious day for my father, grandfather and the people in the world who gave us warm supports,” said Yamamoto.

Kuniyuki Sakuma, who had evacuated his hometown, Okuma, revealed his uneasiness with no actual hope to get back home contaminated with radiation. “What I can do is sending messages to our descendents and the world for not repeating such a tragic event and not fade our memory away,” told Sakuma.

The government of Japan will finish “concentrated reconstruction period” at the end of this month. Insisting on legal coherence or principle of equality, the government of Japan still cannot have tailored policy to the suffered area and keeps on applying reconstruction measures in all-or-nothing manner. It is just pretending to be looking at the suffered people.