Raising funds for Japan

The NUS community continually surprises me and makes me very proud to be here. Last week was one of those moments.

One day following Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami, the students in Department of Japanese Studies took it upon themselves to organize a fund raiser for the Red Cross to assist the victims. Many of these students have been personally moved by Japanese culture since they were very young. Most of them have also been to Japan, either with their families or on study abroad. Japan has continually impacted these students, not only on an educational level, but personally as well. This was an opportunity for them to give back to the country that means so much to them.

Planning began immediately, with the students emailing and calling one another, establishing different committees, and gaining permission from the appropriate University authorities. The effort was called "Send Love to Japan" (see poster below). Over two days, students carried three boxes around campus and collected donations from anyone willing to contribute. A fourth box was placed in front of the Central Library, where passersby had the opportunity to fold one or more paper cranes in a symbolic gesture of hope for the disaster victims.

The students hoped to raise S$10,000 (about US$8000), which I thought would be difficult, but possible. How many students would give money to help the Japanese? How strong would the memories of Japan's military presence in Singapore be? Would Singaporeans be willing to send money to a country with a much larger GDP than its own?

Near the end of the first day I decided to stay and help count the first day's donations. For two hours I assisted six students and two other staff in counting every coin, note and check dropped in the four boxes. We were shocked to find that the students collected just over $26,000 in one day!!

Top of one of the donation boxes.

Having already exceed the goal, I thought that most students and staff had given on the first day and that the next day would have a smaller total. However, the next day's total was $34,000, making a two-day total of $60,000 (US$47,500)! Sadly, I later learned that this is more in relief than the Singapore government sent Haiti last year following its own terrible earthquake.

After two days of raising funds, the students and two of us faculty took the money to the Japanese Association here in Singapore (which then gave the money to the Red Cross). We brought the money in the original boxes, and gave a string of one thousand cranes, too.

Students giving donations to Japanese Association representative

Happy students after turning over the donations

Cranes made by hundreds of individuals now hang in the Japanese Association as a reminder of the efforts of our students and the entire NUS community.

Cranes hanging in the lobby of the Japanese Association

In the end, the students wanted no credit for their efforts. They did not notify newspapers and television and avoided these people when they eventually learned of the efforts. Instead, the students referred reporters to the Department Head. In the end, they credited the students, staff and faculty of NUS for stepping up and showing their concern about the Japanese people in their time of need.

Sea walls and tsunamis

In my last post I wondered when criticism would begin of Japan's expensive and mostly ineffective sea walls.

Sunday, two days following the devastating earthquake and tsunami, NHK was already talking about the inability of sea walls to stop the massive energy of the 9.0 quake. NHK interviewed Japanese scholars from Tokyo University, who questioned such walls, and showed a short segment on Tarō-cho (田老町), Iwate Prefecture (see this short Wiki link), which suffered tsunami damage in 1896 (or 1898*) and 1933 and subsequently built a 10 meter (30 feet) high wall to try to protect itself. I placed a dot on the town in a Google map to indicate the location of the town. I placed the dot on the point where two sea walls converge to form an X, then stretching in four directions. You can zoom out of this map and see the town's location within Japan. You can see the sea walls clearly, although they should be more visible in Google Earth, because you can tilt the view and approach the town from the sea.

The New York Times also has a story about Japan's reliance on sea walls and their ineffectiveness in this recent disaster. The article describes the complacency that can arise when people put too much faith in a man-made structure that cuts them off from a potentially deadly force. If people cannot see the ocean, they cannot watch for small changes that might indicate something dangerous heading their way.

Short post today. I must run to school and try to teach something today about this horrible tragedy.

*I thought I heard NHK say it was the 31st year of Meiji, which would be 1898. However, the Wiki link says the earlier disaster was in 1896.

Earthquake and tsunami reaction in Singapore

We are glued to the television. We signed up for NHK, the Japanese public news network, only a few weeks ago, but we are so glad we have it. The earthquakes and tsunami in northern Japan have rocked the country, and we are getting the live feed. The images and stories are incredible - whole towns being washed away in minutes. We are very fortunate to have no family in the Tohoku region. We have some friends there that we have not heard from, but we are hoping for the best.

The news has also rocked Singapore, and it was on the cover of all the major newspapers today. Singapore is a multiethnic, multilingual country, so one can purchase a newspaper in at least four languages from the news stand - English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil. We bought the English one (the Straits Times), which carried about 8 pages of news about the quake and tsunami. I neglected to photograph the English version, but I took photos of four others (below).

Chinese language paper - estimates of the dead and missing in the bottom right corner.

Chinese language paper

Malay language paper - using the same cover image as the second cover above.

Tamil language paper

We are also glued to the internet, answering emails in Facebook and Gmail. I guess this is how we communicate now. I called my mother today (Singapore to Iowa) using a free tool in Gmail. The craziest story out of this terrible natural disaster comes from a friend who has family in the affected area. After waiting more than 24 hours for word about his wife's grandmother he sent this message about the global nature of technology: "We heard about XX’s grandma in the following way: an sms (text) from a cousin in Miyagi (location of the earthquake) to a cousin in Switzerland followed by an sms to XX’s brother-in-law in San Francisco which was followed by a Skype call to us!" 

Our thoughts continue to go out to everyone affected. Many people on TV are saying they are thankful just to be alive. But with houses and entire villages just washed away, I wonder how they will begin to rebuild.

A few points to note:

1) So far, I have noticed one major difference in reporting between non-Japanese networks (CNN, FOX, even BBC) and NHK (the Japanese network we've been watching most) when it comes to the explosion at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. NHK has still not shown footage of the actual moment of the explosion, whereas the US networks are all showing the blast. Instead, NHK shows a before and after image, showing a clear difference in the second image. However, they have not shown the blast. This is a fascinating difference.

2) A few months ago I taught a unit about the vast amounts of money that have been funneled into construction projects over the past few decades. We read chapters from books by Gavan McCormack (The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence) and Alex Kerr (Dogs and Demons). The country built ports, roads, bridges and tunnels, all of which can be useful. However, great sums were also used for disaster prevention, including sea walls conceived and built to save lives from tsunamis. Many scholars have argued that much of this construction was less about disaster prevention than about lining the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats, and construction companies. 

Footage of waters rising and inundating whole villages shows how useless many of these construction projects have been in actually preventing water from flowing where it will. The energy in a tsunami cannot be held back so easily. In fact, in the weeks and months to come, we may learn that this construction in the name of disaster prevention may have provided a false sense of security for coastal residents, encouraging them to build in places that would normally be thought unwise. I am just speculating, of course, but people around the world live in similar situations. Once there is a real disaster people ask why anyone was allowed to live in these places in the first place (such as below dams, at the base of mountains with a chance of avalanche, and in an historic flood zone, like Boulder, CO).