Four Months Later (2 of 2)

I can think of a few awful events that have occurred in the last decade somewhere in my great homeland of America, but I was usually fairly removed from them. I was sleeping in my bed, safe and sound in Hawaii when those four planes wreaked havoc on the east coast in September of 2001. I watched the events endlessly looped on the news stations that day and in the weeks following, but I could go about my day as a freshman in high school and not think about it until someone brought it up. Hurricane Katrina and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico were events on television that other people had to live through. Not that I didn't sympathize with their struggles or wasn't angry at the government or BP, but I didn't have to deal with it personally. Terrible things can happen in one area and people outside that community don't even notice or care. America is just that big of a country where it happens.

From what I've gathered in my everyday interactions with Japanese people, this is not the case for them following March 11. Maybe they didn't feel the earthquake and only found out about it when they went home for the day, but it weighs on them. The threat of another big earthquake, not just in Tohoku but anywhere in the country, is very real and upsetting. No one is so removed from it that they aren't affected in a very personal way. People lose sleep over it. Some can't express what they feel - the stress, the worry, the fear. What happened in Tohoku is not something that has been forgotten by anyone in Japan, no matter how far away one lives, as it might've been in America. It surprises and humbles me because I don't think I'd ever see that back home.

For many of the people I talk to, they're just as concerned about total strangers as they would be their own family. Sometimes it comes off as an identity thing, "We have to take care of those people, we're all Japanese." We say those things in America too, "Oh we're all Americans at this tragic time blah blah blah," but it always came off as a nice sound bite to me. We say it but we don't mean it. I feel like Japanese people are a bit more sincere about it.*

The response to foreign aid also made an impact on me. I feel like no one can believe that people outside of Japan care. I've had people break down in front of me over how grateful they were for all the money that everyday folks and celebrities gave to charities, and how other countries sent soldiers to help clean up the affected areas. Someone told me that all the ridiculous amounts of money foreigners donated inspired her to start donating to international charities more often, and not only for disasters. I hope that all that money and good will actually goes toward helping the people who need it most.

Of course, these are simply my observations and I am always open to more viewpoints and stories. For myself, I still think I'm lucky and I can't complain about my current situation. This is the closest I ever want to be to this sort of disaster and I hope we don't have to live through anything like this again anytime soon.

*I've been reading more articles on how people from Fukushima are being discriminated against. I feel like that's happened before - group of people in Japan being treated badly because of fears related to nuclear radiation...