15 Years On: Many Areas Struggle to Pass Lessons to New Generations

Tokyo, March 10 (Jiji Press)–About 40 pct of municipalities in the three northeastern Japan prefectures hit hard by the March 2011 massive earthquake and tsunami face difficulties in disaster education for children born after the incident, a Jiji Press survey has found. The survey targeted boards of education in 42 municipalities in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures between January and February this year, and 37 gave replies. Of them, 16 said that disaster preparedness education for elementary and junior high school students “faces hurdles.” “It’s hard to make them see an event before they were born as an issue that concerns them personally,” said an official at the board of education of Tagajo, a Miyagi city. Practical concerns were cited by other municipalities, including the town of Yamada, Iwate, which struggles over training for younger teachers. These instances highlight difficulties schools face with younger people who have little or no memory of the disaster. Fifteen years on, “crisis management manuals need updating and checking,” an education board member at the city of Kuji, Iwate, said. Meanwhile, an official at Kawauchi, a Fukushima village, said, “What we do ends up being similar every year.” “Rising prices have made it harder to buy food supplies and other goods used in disaster education events,” said an official at the Fukushima city of Soma. The burden of long travel poses a problem to disaster education for residents of the Fukushima town of Futaba, one of the two host municipalities for Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Elementary and junior high school students must travel about 80 kilometers by bus from Iwaki, a Fukushima city, where they live as evacuees, to their hometown to visit a disaster memorial museum and tsunami-stricken areas. “Getting there takes time,” an official said. In the town of Okuma, the other host municipality of the Fukushima plant, postdisaster migrants outnumber residents who experienced the disaster there. Okuma’s board of education is grappling with how to encourage students with a variety of backgrounds, including those who grew up outside the town, to view problems facing the town as their own issues. Educators are seeking new approaches. In Higashimatsushima, a Miyagi city, an initiative was launched in January to train future storytellers who can pass on disaster memories. Elementary and junior high school students research topics related to the 2011 disaster that interest them and present their findings. “We’re not only worried about fading memories,” Susumu Aizawa, head of Higashimatsushima’s board of education, said. “We also hope that (students) will be people who can convey the importance of disaster preparedness and evacuation even if they leave the city later for school or work.” In the city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate, students of a junior high school guide students visiting from Nagoya as part of an exchange program that began after the disaster, through a tsunami memorial facility and a reconstruction memorial park, passing on stories. The activity is also aimed at deepening Rikuzentakata students’ understanding. “The key point is inquiry-based learning, in which children pose their own questions and work toward answers themselves,” Hiroshi Kainuma, associate professor in sociology at the University of Tokyo, said about effective disaster education of younger generations. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]