“I am frustrated that many lives could have been saved,” says Ms. Nodoka Kawata. She turns her regret into energy to engage in disaster management activities. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake she experienced at the age of seven decisively changed the rest of her life.

Cultivate the power to survive and overcome difficulties in times of disaster

NPO Sakura Net, where Ms. Kawata works, engages in disaster management/risk reduction education, development of communities that are resilient against disasters, and creation of civic society through public-private partnerships. In a disaster, the organization supports volunteers who go to the affected site to offer help. Sakura Net also provides assistance for reconstructing areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Ms. Nodoka Kawata from NPO Sakura Net engaging in disaster management education (upper left)

In 2011, in cooperation with Iwate Prefectural University’s Student Volunteer Center and the Iwate Prefectural Council of Social Welfare, Sakura Net hosted the Iwate GINGA-NET Project, which organized transportation, accommodation, meals, and destinations for students to participate across the country in carrying out volunteer work at disaster sites in Tohoku, northeast Japan.

Sakura Net has worked for three years as the secretariat of Bosai Koshien, the Disaster Management Tournament, where students across the country who work on disaster management education are recognized for their contributions. Every year, awards are presented at a commemoration ceremony held in January to teams selected from 100 to 120 entries nationwide that have achieved excellent results.

At a commemoration ceremony for Bosai Koshien, the Disaster Management Tournament, awards were presented to teams selected from entries from around the country for their excellent achievements in disaster management activities.

Ms. Kawata is in charge of disaster management/risk reduction education at Sakura Net. At the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution (Chuo Ward, Kobe City), which relates the lessons learned from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, she works to raise the awareness of children, people in education, and municipal employees on disaster management, and plans and develops practical programs for them to voluntarily continue disaster management activities.

In addition, she conducts seminars and works together with local communities and social welfare councils through a program for raising awareness of disaster management: Disaster Management Expo for Children.

Ms. Kawata says that disaster management education can change people’s mindset, and even the way that communities work.

“Students from Tsuda Junior High School, Tokushima City, have received awards many times. They carry out surveys of residents during their summer vacation on disaster issues and present countermeasures to their Mayor or town councilors. Their efforts are changing the mindset of local communities.”

NPO Sakura Net lends out educational materials for disaster management education.

People need to participate in disaster management education and activities at an early age to prepare for any eventuality.

What a child saw in Kobe

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake happened on a winter day at 5:46 a.m. Ms. Kawata says she still remembers the scene in slow motion, where dishes were jumping out from the cupboard, breaking one after another.

“In the early morning, when I sat up in bed and saw my father going to work, there was a rumbling sound I had never heard before, and my body was being swayed to and fro as if it was floating in the air.”

She said she did not instantly understand that it was a huge earthquake that would go down in history because people had said, “An earthquake will never happen in Kobe,” and her fear intensified with the continuing aftershocks.

“When the electricity was restored a few hours later after the earthquake, I turned on the TV to see the damage. My grandparents lived in Nagata Ward, where there were many fires and houses collapsed. My entire family got into the car to leave Suma Ward for Nagata Ward to see my grandparents.”

As a young child, Ms. Kawata saw striking scenes on the way. “Large buildings had almost fallen. Two-storied houses were so damaged that they looked only one-story high. People were standing dumbstruck with astonishment. When we arrived at last, we saw that my grandfather’s house had been half destroyed. It was demolished later.”

“I could not believe that the house I had often visited since I went to play as a child had been lost to the earthquake. I kept telling my parents that I wanted to see their house. When I visited one year after the disaster, the house was gone. Then I realized for the first time that the house had been destroyed in the earthquake.”

“My grandfather’s house was a source of my emotional support. During the winter vacation, when I wrote an essay about it being lost, my mother suggested that I write something happy. Thereafter, I gradually tried to forget about the earthquake in order not to make my mother unhappy.”

A photograph taken in front of the house of Ms. Kawata’s grandfather

Why she specialized in disaster management in high school

A newspaper article she read during the third year of junior high school brought back memories of the disaster.

“Hyogo Prefectural Maiko High School established a new course, Environment and Disaster Mitigation. One of the inaugural students wrote in an article, ‘My grandmother was crushed to death under her collapsed house. I took this course to face up to the disaster.’ Since then, I have started to think that learning about disasters is not a bad thing, and decided to take the course to face up to the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.”

The course focused on disaster management, which was a first in Japan. Ms. Kawata took it and learned about disasters and lessons for disaster management.

“I learned that many people in Kobe were not prepared for an earthquake because it had been said that earthquakes never occur in Kobe, and many were killed after being trapped under collapsed houses or fallen furniture. It is said that 4,000 lives would have been saved if furniture had been secured and buildings reinforced for earthquakes.”

Ms. Kawata’s passion for disaster management, a prayer-like feeling, is driven by the death of a person close to her. Her nursery school teacher died from being hit by falling furniture.

“Earthquakes are inevitable, but we can lessen their damage. If disaster management education can save lives, I would like to learn more about disaster management.” Ms. Kawata also majored in disaster management in the Disaster Prevention/Social Contribution Unit at university. She started a volunteer organization to work on disaster management education.

A path toward working on disaster management, which she was about to give up on

Ms. Kawata became more proactive, but she says she was sometimes passive.

“When the Great Sichuan Earthquake happened, I was a third-year student participating in a seminar on disaster management education. As an activity to support the affected area, we launched the One Crane One Wish Project, folding 1,000 paper cranes and writing a wish on each paper bird.”

“When our project members suggested bringing these cranes to Sichuan, I was scared and did not want to go there. I did not tell them the truth, however, and said, ‘I won’t go because I cannot afford it.’ Everyone then tried to find a way to collect funds to cover my expenses, so I felt guilty and said that I would go.”

She struggled before selecting her current path.

Looking back on those times, Ms. Kawata says, “I had not worked with confidence until then. When I was looking for a job, I was sometimes unable to introduce myself successfully while talking about my disaster management activities. I still had some painful memories of the disaster. I thought I should give up working on disaster management.”

“When I was in the third year of high school, my childhood memories came back to me. I could not bear to hear about the Great Sichuan Earthquake. I felt vulnerable and that there was nothing I could do to cope.”

“Looking back, it was good for me to go to Sichuan. The program made me realize the importance and necessity of facing the facts to learn lessons and convey thoughts. I feel grateful to my friends who supported me.”

After twists and turns, Ms. Kawata graduated from university and found work at Sakura Net, where she had had some connection to since her student days through her volunteer activities. She says she reconsidered her mission in life.

“When I decided to dedicate my life to this job, I looked back at the reason that I chose this path and reflected on the job. Then I realized that I did not dislike disaster management education, only that I just did not have enough courage to face it.”

Passing on her memories of the disaster

Still Ms. Kawata had long-forgotten memories, which arose when she wrote about her disaster experience in “Passing Down a Story,” in a high school class in the third year.

“When I said that I was seven when the disaster occurred, people thought that I could not remember it, but my high school teacher said, ‘The level of experience or age is irrelevant. Even though you were too young to express your experiences of the disaster in words at that time, telling your story and about the lessons you learned from the disaster now as a third-year high school student will fill the gap. Very little is known about children’s memories for the disaster.”

“I would like to spread disaster management education further,” says Ms. Kawata, who aims to increase the number of schools that undertake disaster management activities with local communities on a daily basis, like Tsuda Junior High School in Tokushima City. She has a big dream about disaster management: “I would like to build a framework to broaden the reach of disaster management education on a daily basis in school education, and increase the number of young people who assist children to learn lessons from disaster management and carry out activities.”

In today’s society, people of different generations have little contact with each other. Passing on memories of a disaster like Ms. Kawata is very important. In addition to telling us memories of the disaster, she stresses that every one of us should value life. To save future lives, why not create opportunities to learn about and practice disaster management and disaster risk reduction?

Interviewed and written by Aya Hemendinger
This article was created with the cooperation of greenz.jp.