OFUNATO, Japan - Almost two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami plunged the Asian nation into its worst crisis since the Second World War, an increasingly thorough and successful humanitarian relief operation is replacing the scenes of suffering and devastation.Food aid is flowing, refugees are restoring daily routines and even mobile banks are appearing in north Japan as the nation rallies around victims of the March 11 double disaster.
"For the first two or three days, we had only one rice ball and water for each meal. I thought, ‘How long is this going to go on?' Now we get lots of food, it's almost like luxury, like better than what we used to have at home!", said 57-year-old Tsutomu Hirayama at an evacuation centre with his elderly mother, wife and three children in Ofunato city on the Pacific coast.- In a typical story for Japan's 256,714 refugees, Hirayama lost his dry cleaning shop and home when the tsunami crashed in from the sea, obliterating whole towns in its wake.
- Nearly 26,000 people died or are missing.
- At Ofunato, restaurants have been donating food to refugees — sushi, grilled chicken and curry. The military has given them food packets of hot soup and rice. Clothes have poured in.
Power and water services are back, meaning people can at last wash clothes. They still drink water from tanks provided by the military. Some of the evacuees say they have been told their new accommodation will be free for two years, but they do not know when they can move.
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