To a winter different than usual.

[December 2, 2011 3:07PM]

The other day, [my team and I] were finally able to submit a report on our medical assistance in the disaster sites over the past year, as well as the issues we will be facing from now on and specific cases that need the government’s attention to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
We need to have them build as many new hospitals and clinics in the affected areas as possible, ideally a clinic inside each temporary housing complex, but now that the government is tending to direct its attention to international issues, I’m not sure how much of a change we can make.  Although united as one, it is, after all, nothing more than the opinion of a small medical assistance team.
I hope our opinion will bear fruit.

Luna’s aunt in Rikuzen-Takata has let me know that Luna is now living far away, with relatives in the Kansai region.
I heard Luna has been feeling down lately, because she lost one of the dolls that her mother risked her life to save, knowing that she treasured them so much.

I heard about the “100 Santas” project, so I asked Luna’s aunt to invite her to come and stay with her in Rikuzen-Takata for Christmas, and to keep the Santa project a secret from her.  I hope Luna will be able to receive something new and precious from Santa, after losing that little doll, and I hope more than anything else that she will be able to laugh and smile from the bottom of her heart.

I hope that all those children who stepped outside of the evacuation site at the gymnasium and into the cold on that one night after the earthquake when the moon and stars were shining brightly in the sky, those children who lost their family and friends—Yu, who was crying that “That picture book we just got said that everyone who dies becomes a star in the sky.  That star shining over there is Grandpa,” and Jun and the other kids who said “When we grow up, we’ll fly to the stars on an airplane and bring everyone home, and we’ll build houses that won’t be washed away in tsunamis,” and made the adults cry—I wish they could all have smiles on their faces [this Christmas].

I’ll be traveling to provide medical assistance at some clinics in Rikuzen-Takata around that time, so I’m looking forward to seeing Luna and everyone from the evacuation site.

It has been growing colder and colder every day, but we will work harder than ever to do all those things that we can still do, to help keep the disaster from being forgotten.

The kinds of assistance and other things in need have been changing since those days right after the earthquake.

Just because this year is about to end, it doesn’t mean we can press a reset button and pretend 3.11 never happened.

I hope to go on finding even the smallest things than can give [us all] warm feelings, or make [us] smile.





Translated June 5, 2012.
Original entry in Japanese: いつもと違う冬に。