Photo: Clockwise from left: Mr. Haruki Ishida (senior high school second year student), Mr. Junpei Yamashita (first year), Mr. Ryuichiro Yamazaki (first year), Mr. Makoto Kosaka (second year / President of the School Council), Mr. Kaiji Sano (second year), Mr. Shinji Shimada (first year), Mr. Yoshihiro Iizuka (second year), and Mr. Yuya Matsuda (second year).

For young people under 19, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake is an event that happened before they were born. What do the generations who have grown and learnt in Kobe without direct experience of the earthquake think about the earthquake? We interviewed eight first and second-year students at Kobe-based Nada Senior High School, one of the most renowned private high schools in Japan. They are working on a series of activities which remember the earthquake.

Nada High School’s relations with the two great earthquakes

Nada High School is located in Kobe’s Higashinada Ward, one of the areas indescribably devastated by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The school buildings managed to withstand the disaster, and functioned as a shelter for affected people for six months, even though they were not designated as an official shelter by the local government. Many teachers who experienced the disaster are still working at the high school.



The Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, 16 years after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

Mr. Naoya Maekawa (Chair and Secretariat, Fukushima Network for Learning), who was then a Japanese history teacher at Nada High School, visited Kamaishi City, Iwate Prefecture, for volunteer work during the summer holidays in 2011. Inspired by his stories about the post-disaster realities of the city, volunteer students from Nada High School began to visit disaster-affected areas. They call this program the Camp for Visiting the Affected Tohoku Region (also known as the Tohoku Camp). Members of the latest Tohoku Camp visited the region in winter 2015, for the 13th time.

Mr. Kaiji Sano: I am serving as the leader of the Tohoku Camp. Although members of the Tohoku Camp did volunteer work at first, as time has passed, during the three days and two nights, junior and senior high school student volunteers have gradually found themselves with less and less to do. So, our Tohoku Camp has begun to listen to, and have discussions with people, affected in Tohoku - people working for reconstruction support, local high school students, and other people. In Tohoku we are learning about locals’ experience of the disaster and their efforts towards reconstruction, and sharing this knowledge with people back in the Kansai region. We call these activities “shiru-bora • tsutae-bora” (volunteer work for knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing).

Mr. Asahi Katada Son, a contemporary social studies teacher, joined Mr. Maekawa to lead the 20 Tohoku Camp students. Mr. Maekawa quit Nada High School in 2014, being absolutely determined to run an educational support organization in Fukushima. He is still greatly respected by students involved in the Tohoku Camp.

* Click here to read Mr. Naoya Maekawa’s story.:https://bekobe.smartkobe-portal.com/interview/2015/01/1769/ (in Japanese.)


The reconstruction of disaster-affected areas requires more than theory

Photo: Mr. Haruki Ishida (second year student), Mr. Junpei Yamashita (first year), Mr. Ryuichiro Yamazaki (first year)

Mr. Haruki Ishida participated in the 13th Tohoku Camp. He walked from Fukushima City, through Date City, to an area near the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The Odaka district, Minamisoma City, located within 20 km from the plant, is an “area to which evacuation orders are ready to be lifted,” which at current people are only allowed to enter during the daytime.

Mr. Haruki Ishida: I participated in the Tohoku Camp to gain knowledge. My lack of knowledge about the aftermath of the disaster in Tohoku meant that I felt some fear and didn’t have a clear picture of what had happened. Visiting Tohoku, I learnt more not only about the damage which had happened, but also about what local people thought about the destruction. And I realized that people in Tohoku are filled with great passion!

Photo: Listening to local people explaining the damage caused by the tsunami at Lake Matsukawaura, Fukushima Prefecture

There were realities which were completely different from what had been shown in the news. Mr. Junpei Yamashita, who went to Kesennuma in spring and Fukushima in summer, 2014, spoke to us, and said, “I also had a similar experience.”

Mr. Junpei Yamashita: The words of Hotel Boyo’s owner, a hotel in Kessennuma which acted as a shelter, left a deep impression on me. She said, “I hope you will become a person who can stand by people in need.” I also really felt that reconstruction would not be an easy process. There are many things to consider, including debris disposal.

Mr. Yamashita began to pursue various activities in his own field, including giving presentations on the Tohoku Camp at the school festival, and participating in High School Summits organized by schools involved in support for disaster-affected areas, and disaster management. He says that he changed after participating in the Tohoku Camp; now, he takes action himself.

Mr. Ryuichiro Yamazaki, a first year student who participated in the Tohoku Camp in Fukushima, started his story by saying, “My experience may be a little different from that of other people.”

Mr. Ryuichiro Yamazaki: I was born in 1998, three years after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. I heard that Kobe had been almost completely reconstructed at that time, so quite naively I imagined that Tohoku also could be reconstructed within four to five years. I was relatively lighthearted, thinking that Tohoku would have been completely reconstructed. Although I witnessed terrible situations in affected areas, I was unable to change my feeling that Tohoku could be reconstructed quickly.

Mr. Yamazaki was shocked at the realities before his eyes. He saw innumerable bags of radioactive-contaminated soil left at temporary depots, where people had lived before, because there were no other places to store them.

Although people in urban areas may think that radioactive soil can be easily disposed of somewhere, there are no such places. We can certainly calculate how many years the disposal of such an amount of soil and debris will take, but there are many other things to think about. I realized there were human feelings beyond numerical measurement and calculation, including people’s grief at the loss of their homelands. I acutely felt that I had seen the news about the disaster just in a shallow way.

In addition to logical thinking, which fits Nada High School students, they found human emotions as an important factor for the reconstruction. A place where they came in contact with human feelings became a special place for them.

Mr. Kaiji Sano: My participation in the Tohoku Camp has a great significance for me, in that it makes problems in Tohoku my own problems, and fosters my non-bystander awareness. Visiting affected areas and communicating with people there makes Tohoku “Tohoku where Mr. or Ms. So-and-so lives.” Because I became involved in Tohoku, I became able to see the news from a different point of view.

Mr. Shinji Shimada: When we talked in the waiting room in the station after the camp, a senior citizen took us to a Chinese restaurant. Hearing we came from Hyogo, the master of the restaurant warmly welcomed us, and told us about what he had experienced at the time of the disaster. I felt grateful to him for telling us that story, even though we were strangers to him; stories about local people I heard in Tohoku gave a sense of reality.

Through visiting Tohoku, they experienced first-hand that thinking about things you had never considered before is a valuable asset.


Nada High School students connected with the local community through the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake

Photo: Mr. Kaiji Sano (second year), Mr. Shinji Shimada (first year), Mr. Yoshihiro Iizuka (second year), and Mr. Yuya Matsuda (second year)

To share their experience in Tohoku with other students, they set up exhibition booths at Tohoku Camp briefing sessions and school festivals. During such activities, they were impressed that many local people in Kobe said, “Because we experienced the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, we are also interested in the Great East Japan Earthquake.”

Mr. Kaiji Sano: No matter how many times we watched the news and other TV programs dealing with great earthquakes, we were unable to have a real feeling about them, and we did not feel so close to them, because we had no such experience. That is why I wanted to try what we could do as a generation, without personal knowledge.

Moreover, to look back at the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake 20 years earlier, they interviewed teachers working at Nada Junior and Senior High School about their experience at the time of the earthquake, with the aim of publishing these interviews in a booklet.

Mr. Yoshihiro Iizuka: The interviews with teachers allowed us to find great depth of personality in them and real value in their words. Mr. Hatsuda, who taught art before his retirement, said, “In the case of an emergency, knowledge is certainly important, but wisdom is more important.” For example, you may think you cannot cook without a pot. Instead, you can cook by using other things and your wisdom.

Photo: Mr. Makoto Kosaka (second year / President of the School Council) and Mr. Kaiji Sano (second year)

Furthermore, they considered what they could do as Nada High School students in Higashinada, and began to design a project beyond the limitations of the school.

Mr. Yoshihiro Iizuka: Sano and I discussed the importance of building our relationships with the local community to prepare for natural disasters, as well as other emergencies. We felt that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake would connect us with local people by serving as a common topic that would enable us, and the locals, to learn from each other.

Mr. Kaiji Sano: Because 2015 will mark the 20th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, we discussed what to do with the school council president, Kosaka, many times.

In fact, Mr. Kosaka has not participated in the Tohoku Camp. He says, however, that he felt regret every time his friends returned from Tohoku, and said to the other students including him, “You cannot fully understand the affected areas without visiting them.” Discovering the growing gap between students with and without experience in visiting Tohoku, he started to organize a project to share experience of Tohoku Camp participants with the other students.

Mr. Makoto Kosaka: Because I wanted students who had not been to Tohoku also to think about the tragic events, I thought that the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake could be a common topic, as an event that happened to the school. Since I have not been to Tohoku, I participated in this project considering what people who have not been to Tohoku would think about the project.

In January 2015, they held a panel exhibition called the “Photo exhibition of disasters in Higashinada: Great earthquake and great flood ~Looking back from Sumiyoshi Station” at Rokko Liner Sumiyoshi Station, the nearest station to Nada High School.

Photo: The exhibition displayed panels of collected photographs showing damage caused by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the Great Hanshin Flood, to look back at past disasters in Higashinada Ward, and reconfirm lessons learnt from them, and ongoing problems. The exhibition was held in the corridor next to Rokko Liner Sumiyoshi Station, between January 10 and 25, 2015.

All generations’ hopes “connected with each other in parallel” will make for a brighter future

Nada High School, as one of the top high schools in Japan, attracts students from around Japan. Because there are very few students from the local areas, many Nada High School students have difficulty feeling affection and attachment for the communities around Higashinada.

Mr. Yuya Matsuda: The current situation may imply that Nada High School is not loved by local people in a true sense, so we launched an “elementary school project,” where Nada High School students teach classes at nearby elementary schools, aiming to pursue some activities to connect the high school to the local community.

Photo: Nada High School students talking about the exhibition project and their activities as disaster volunteers

Mr. Yuya Matsuda: The elementary school project targets a younger generation. I believe, essentially, that our effort in connecting hopes of our generation with the hopes of older and younger generations in parallel will finally connect Nada High School to the local community.

Mr. Kaiji Sano: I think a community whose members always exchange greetings and communicate among each other may be more resilient to disaster. I hope more than anything to live in such a community, where people are mentally and emotionally close to each other.

Visiting Tohoku and seeing the importance of connections with local communities, through their acute intelligence and pure heart, they created a synergy that might not exist in areas which have not been struck by disaster.
It surely must not just be me who feels proud of the city of Kobe where, even after the great earthquake, young people seriously consider what future they should create, and take action to make it happen.


(Interviewed and written by Mami Asai)
This article was created with the cooperation of greenz.jp.