From the Relief Headquarters for Persons with Disabilities of Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake:
Dear Friends,
To support persons with disabilities affected by the Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake on 11 March, DPI-Japan, JIL, Yumekaze Foundation and other Disability Organizations established "Relief Headquarters for Persons with Disabilities of Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake".
Today they open their site in English. Please circulate among your network!
http://dpi.cocolog-nifty.com/en
Currently, this blog is providing updates from the "Relief Headquarters for Persons with Disabilities of Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake". This HQ is organized by persons with disabilities to support persons with disabilities affected by the great earthquake.
It will be updated continuously with fresh information thanks to the support of Taisuke of DPI Asia-Pacific office.
Recent Posts Include:
Mass media pays less attention to PWDs in disaster (21 March)
National Welfare Center becomes Shelter for PWDs (19 March)
and Iwaki IL Center evacuates to Tokyo (19 March)
For donation, please visit the following site.
http://dpi.cocolog-nifty.com/en/2011/03/we-need-your-su.html
Dear friends,
On behalf of my colleagues, I sincerely appreciate messages of concern and sympathy from all over the world.
On March 11, massive earthquake hit east-northern part of Japan. The earthquake recorded unhistorical scale - Magnitude 9.0 - and caused tens of thousands of causalities. Hundreds of persons with disabilities are highly suffered from this disaster.
DPOs in Japan immediately set up an emergent disaster relief headquarters at Japan Council on Independent Living Centers (JIL) and appointed me as director. The headquarters started operation on March 15 in collaborations with DPI-Japan and various groups of persons with disabilities of all over Japan.
In disaster plagued areas, serious shortage of fuel and electricity is a big problem. Personal assistants cannot reach to users' home. Respirator users have difficulty in obtaining electric power. Even if they have generators, it is difficult to use portable generator due to lack of fuel. Shortage of food is also serious...
>>> To Download A Petition Asking the Japanese Government for Appropriate Emergency Relief Supports
Your support is highly, highly appreciated.
Yukiko Nakanishi and Shoji Nakanishi, Director
Relief Headquarters for Persons with Disabilities of Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake
From the TakeAway (3.21.11):
Japan Relief: Helping the Most Vulnerable
John Hockenberry's story interviewing Shoji and Yukiko Nakanishi
The tsunami came too quickly. Japan's coastal towns had only a 30-minute warning, which was barely enough time to escape the wave, and for many disabled citizens, not enough time at all. The disabled are among the most vulnerable victims of the recent destruction in Japan. Yukiko and Shoji Nakanishi are members of a Japanese relief organization that is working tirelessly to provide shelter and evacuation support to northern Japan's disabled populations.
>>> To Listen to the (Uncaptioned/Untranscribed) Interview
From the Beacon Broadside (3.17.11):
Postcard from Japan: Disability and Disaster
by Suzanne Kamata
Whenever I case a new location, look at friends' vacation photos, or watch travelogues, I wonder about wheelchair accessibility. I wondered the same thing on Friday afternoon, watching disaster coverage on TV with my eleven-year-old daughter in Japan.
An hour earlier, when I went to pick her and her wheelchair up from school – the school for the deaf, which is housed in an aging four-story building with no elevator – her principal rushed out to my car to tell me to hurry home. He told me that a tsunami warning had been issued for Tokushima Prefecture...
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