Today, January 17

January 17, 2012

It has been 17 years since the day that 6,434 people lost their lives in the Hanshin Awaji Earthquake in Kobe.

Today at 5:46 in the morning at Ishinomaki’s Nakase Ishinomori Manga-kan, the 1.17 Hanshin Awaji Earthquake Memorial Service took place. About one hundred people from Ishinomaki and relief support groups in the area attended the service. Candles were lit as a requiem for the souls of those lost 17 years ago.

This Hanshin Awaji Earthquake was the start of Peace Boat’s relief support activities. Along with many other volunteers and the local emergency services, Peace Boat also entered the Nagata area of Kobe when the earthquake struck the Hanshin region in 1995. We honestly hoped that we would never see another disaster like this, but we were sadly mistaken. Natural disasters have continued to ravage places all over the globe, and northeast Japan has been one of them.

The scale of the disaster in Northeast Japan is larger than that of the Hanshin Awaji Earthquake. In conjunction with other organisations and actors, we at Peace Boat hope to continue to find ways to support the people affected by this disaster, both in Ishinomaki and in the rest of the affected areas in northeast Japan.

January 17, 2012

Yamamoto Takashi

President, Peace Boat Disaster Volunteer Center