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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*

1:00 P.M. EST March 24, 2011

Second Harvest Japan works with local officials and volunteers to deliver relief supplies in Karakuwa, Japan. Photo courtesy of Second Harvest Japan.

As the chaplain of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, the Rev. Paul Shew has been busier than ever as he helps coordinate the school’s response to earthquake-related relief needs, both locally and in northern Japan.

On a personal level, the days since March 11 have been filled with anxiety for Shew, a United Methodist volunteer-in-mission from Ohio who also teaches at the Christian university.

He is adjusting to the daily aftershocks — the most he has ever experienced during his 12 years in Japan. “But,” he added, “the radiation threat is the really unnerving element — especially for those of us with small children.”

Many others are unnerved by that threat, as Shew discovered on March 23, after the Japanese government advised the radiation levels in Tokyo’s tap water were too high for infants to drink. “I stopped by my local grocery store on my way home from work and discovered that virtually all bottled drinks were sold out,” he reported.

His wife, Mari, is from Sendai — the closest large city to the earthquake’s epicenter — and Shew lived there himself as an exchange student in high school and college. “Fortunately, relief efforts are getting under way in earnest, but so many people are missing, including friends of ours,” he told United Methodist News Service. “Everyone in the country has been deeply affected by this.”

Both inside and outside Japan, church-related organizations are beginning to network together to respond to survivors of the earthquake and tsunami that left nearly 22,000 dead or missing in northeastern Japan and hundreds of thousands homeless. Meanwhile, the radiation threat continues as workers try to repair damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

A number of churches were damaged in the disaster and church members remain among the missing. The Shinsei Kamaishi Church in the hard-hit Iwate Prefecture, for example, stands in ruins following the earthquake and tsunami.

The National Christian Council of Japan has formed an ecumenical relief committee made up of representatives from its member churches — Lutheran, Baptist Convention, Baptist Union, Anglican/Episcopal, Korean Church in Japan and the United Church of Christ in Japan, also known as the Kyodan.

Coordinating relief

The committee will help coordinate relief efforts through the UCCJ Tohoku Disaster Relief Center established at the Emmaus Center in Sendai, where a United Church of Christ missionary, the Rev. Jeffrey Mensendiek, is the director.

While food can now be found in Sendai stores, gasoline is still hard to come by, Mensendiek reported in a March 22 update. “Foreigners are nowhere to be seen,” he wrote. “Perhaps 50 percent of the people of this city have left. The ones left are those who call this home.”

The United Methodist Committee on Relief, which had received some $600,000 in donations as of March 21, quickly made initial $10,000 grants to the United Church of Christ in Japan and GlobalMedic, a Canadian relief partner, to provide basic necessities to earthquake/tsunami survivors.

In a March 21 letter, the Rev. Cynthia Fierro Harvey, UMCOR’s top executive, said the agency was honoring the Japanese government’s request that outside groups not come to Japan.

“UMCOR staff generally does not go into disaster areas as first responders, and we are working through trusted partners who have existing networks on the ground in the affected areas,” she wrote. “We anticipate working with our partners to direct your gifts to earthquake and tsunami survivors in Japan as needs and plans for response are identified.”

While well-meaning church members may feel moved to send supplies or even themselves to Japan as a way to assist in relief efforts — as they have during the Haiti earthquake recovery — such actions simply aren’t practical in this situation, relief officials say.

“Many supplies are available in Japan, and sending funds directly to our partners supports the local economy while ensuring that they are getting exactly what they need,” Harvey pointed out in her letter.

“An additional concern is that sending an unsolicited shipment into the disaster area runs the risk of hampering relief efforts, clogging runways and creating an added burden to the system because there is no efficient way to distribute the shipment,” she wrote.

The Shinsei Kamaishi Church in Kamaishi, Japan, stands
in ruins following the earthquake and tsunami. The town is
in the hard-hit Iwate Prefecture. Photo courtesy of UCCJ.

Or, as Charles McJilton, executive director of Second Harvest Japan, explained, “For every $1 donated, we can deliver $10 worth of food. A typical box of food sent to Japan will cost about $20 in postage. Using the postage as a financial donation, we can deliver more than $200 worth of food.”

Getting supplies to Sendai

Second Harvest Japan, whose sponsors include West Tokyo Union Church, has driven several truckloads of supplies, including sanitation goods, to Sendai. The supplies were distributed to agencies or centers — including orphanages, facilities for the elderly and disabled, and evacuation centers — in five cities in the area.

GlobalMedic is working with HOPE International Development Agency/Japan, to create supply chains to deliver relief items from Nagoya and Tokyo into Fukishima, Sendai and Kensenuma and other areas. Local partners assist in distribution of the supplies.

On March 22, the two organizations delivered 41,472 diapers for infants and children to Fukushima, according to the GlobalMedic website. A team was scheduled to deliver medication and other essential items by helicopter to Sendai the next day.

Church World Service, acting on behalf of the ACT Alliance, of which UMCOR is a part, is focusing its efforts on the Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, according to a March 23 situation report from Takeshi Komino, head of emergencies for the CWS Asia/Pacific Office.

In the Miyagi Prefecture, medical services will be provided for those living in Natori City and Iwanuma City, in cooperation with the Tohoku International Clinic in Natori City. In the Iwate Prefecture, a 24-hour mobile medical service will be provided in Rikuzentakaka City, also through the Tohoku clinic.

About 7,500 individuals are expected to benefit from the medical services, and 5,000 families will receive basic items, such as stoves, masks, disinfectant, clothes and toothbrushes, along with temporary toilets and satellite-communication services.

People attend a vigil in support of survivors of the Japan earthquake and tsunami at the General Post Office in Melbourne, Australia. Photo by
Takver, Flickr Creative Commons.

Stop Hunger Now, a United Methodist-related emergency food program, is working with its in-country partners, Feed the Hungry and Japan International Food for the Hungry, to help them provide food to those in need.

Assisting evacuees

Back at Aoyama Gakuin University, students have volunteered the past week at the nearby Wesley Center to assist with Filipino evacuees from the Tohoku region who were staying there.

The university also expects eventually to send volunteers to another church-related institution, the Asian Rural Institute, which suffered earthquake damage.

Shew noted that a university assessment team has traveled to Sendai to coordinate a response there through local churches and Tohoku Gakuin University.

“We have a special and historic relationship with Tohoku Gakuin and will be working to assist them in their recovery,” Shew explained. “Many residents of Tohoku are still lacking basic services such as water or gas. Electricity has been restored to most areas, but fuel for heaters or vehicles is still hard to obtain.”

To support UMCOR’s assistance to relief efforts in Japan, donations can be made here.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.