What should we do?

Attention has focused on the battle to avert a nuclear crisis at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, but Japan is also facing a massive humanitarian challenge.


Although more than seven days have passed after the massive earthquake and tsunami, some communities remain isolated and survivors are in danger of hypothermia and dehydration.





Of course many people tried to improve this situation.

We can see a lot of volunteer activities to help the victims in many places.






But...most of the roads to the emergency shelters or evacuation centers are badly damaged.


What's worse, many relief efforts are being hampered by freezing temperatures and snow, shortages of fuel and hundreds of aftershocks, delaying deliveries of vital food, water, blankets and medicines to survivors and evacuees.




I feel sad when I see the scene of eldery people huddled at a wood stove in the vast hall of an evacuation center staring blankly into the flames...





The government has earmarked ￥5.4 billion to pay for fuel for the SDF(Self-Defence Forces) to transport aid and the petrol to affected areas to power heaters and heavy machinery.


Exactly it's helpful, but I think that the government should manage to use more choppers to deliver necessities to survivors as soon as possible.


Using civilian or private choppers may be a disobedience to the ongoing law.


But we've never experienced such an terrible disaster.


The first thing that we have to do is to do what we can do for the victims now, I think.