HUMANITARIAN RELIEF IN JAPAN REPLACES THE SCENES OF SUFFERING
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.1,000 BODIES WASHED UP ALONG JAPAN'S COASTLINE
Rescue workers used chain saws and hand picks Monday to dig out bodies in Japan's devastated coastal towns
TAKAJO, Japan - A Japanese police official said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered on Monday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture. The official declined to be named, citing department policy.The bodies washed up along Japan’s coastline, crematoriums were overwhelmed and rescue workers ran out of body bags as the nation faced the grim reality of its mounting humanitarian, economic and nuclear crisis on Monday after a calamitous tsunami.
Millions of people were facing a fourth night without water, food or heating in near freezing temperatures in the devastated northeast. Meanwhile, a third reactor at a nuclear power plant lost its cooling capacity, raising fears of a meltdown, while the stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda.
The discovery raised the official death toll to about 2,800 but the Miyagi police chief has said that more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone, which has a population of 2.3 million. In one town in a neighbouring prefecture, the crematorium was unable to handle the crush of bodies being brought in for funerals.
Friday’s double tragedy has caused unimaginable deprivation for people of this industrialized country – Asia’s richest – which hasn’t seen such hardship since World War II. In many areas there is no running water, no power and four to five hour waits for gasoline. People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.
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