Honest Japanese Return Total of $78 Million in Cash Found in Quake Rubble

[IndigoStar]

By AKIKO FUJITA (@akikofujita)
TOKYO Aug. 17, 2011

The earthquake and tsunami that walloped Japan left much of its coastline ravaged, but left one thing intact: the Japanese reputation for honesty.

In the five months since the disaster struck, people have turned in thousands of wallets found in the debris, containing $48 million in cash.

More than 5,700 safes that washed ashore along Japan's tsunami-ravaged coast have also been hauled to police centers by volunteers and search and rescue crews. Inside those safes officials found $30 million in cash. One safe alone, contained the equivalent of $1 million.

The National Police Agency says nearly all the valuables found in the three hardest hit prefectures, have been returned to their owners.

"In most cases, the keyholes on these safes were filled with mud," said Koetsu Saiki with the Miyagi Prefectural Police. "We had to start by cutting apart the metal doors with grinders and other tools."

Determining who the safes belonged to, proved to be the easy part. Saiki says most kept bankbooks or land rights documents inside the boxes, containing their names and address. Tracking the owners down, was much more challenging.
PHOTO: A man walks his dog past tsunami debris in the town of Minamisanriku, Miyagi prefecture, April 23, 2011.
Kazuhiro/AFP/Getty Images
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Total of $78 Million Was Returned to Owners in Wake of Japan Catastrophe

"The fact that these safes were washed away, meant the homes were washed away too," he said. "We had to first determine if the owners were alive, then find where they had evacuated to."

Saiki says Miyagi police fanned out across the region, searching for names of residents posted at evacuation centers, digging through missing person reports at town halls, sorting through change of address forms at the post office, to see if the owner had moved away. When they couldn't find the documents, police called listed cell phone numbers, met with mayors or village leaders to see if they recognized the names.

The number of safes continued to increase as the clearing of tsunami debris led to more discoveries. Police stations struggling to find space for them housed the valuables in parking garages and meeting rooms.

Saiki says 20 percent of the 2,450 safes found in Miyagi turned out to be empty. But, the remaining 250 boxes contained much more than cash. Some included bars of gold, antiques, even crafted boxes containing a child's umbilical cord, a common memento of child birth. Police had to delicately comb through the keepsakes, since many of the items were damaged, after being soaked in seawater and mud for days or weeks.

The stashing of cash in safes isn't a unique problem in Japan, where many people prefer to keep their money at home, but Saiki says the number of boxes is especially high in the coastal region where fishermen make up a large part of the population. Fisheries companies prefer cash transactions, and keep employee salaries in safes, he said.

The number of lost items recovered has declined with every month, but Saiki says his department continues to receive a handful of safes a week.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/honest-japanese-return-78-million-cash-found-quake/story?id=14322940

PS. Hope I didn't post this in the wrong place! Sorry if I did!

[SKIBADABOMSKI]

Only yesterday, I left a bag on the bus full of passengers. It had a canon S95 and all my credit cards and cash and my passport. I didn't even worry when I realized I'd left it on the bus. I was just annoyed that I'd have to go and pick it up from the local bus depo as the passengers had handed it in.

Thats one of the great things about living in this country. I have just been away for 2 months in europe and I didn't even lock my front door.

[IndigoStar]

I take it you don't live in Hackney then? lol
I think outside the cities the UK is very safe though. I always have my front door unlocked. It's one of the things I love too. I did understand right, that you live in the UK and not Japan? :confused:

[SKIBADABOMSKI]

I take it you don't live in Hackney then? lol
I think outside the cities the UK is very safe though. I always have my front door unlocked. It's one of the things I love too. I did understand right, that you live in the UK and not Japan? :confused:

No I live in Tokyo but I'm from the UK and yes I did live in Hackney for a year. Wonderful Hackney was one of the main reasons I left the UK to never return. For that I thank the place. lol..

[Marsila]

Everyone has a lot to learn from the Japanese and how important being respectful at all times is to them. A person is their reputation at the end of the day.

Does anyone even remember that video recording where even one of the dogs, refused to get rescued before leading the rescuers to another fellow doggie it was with after the Tsunami? I think the spirit of the people they were with reflected in that.

There collectively "sticking" together in their bad time, i think has raised the collective conscious of all humans on Earth, by a few points.

[IndigoStar]

LOL Skidabomski!! The UK is pretty safe too though with good communities (in certain areas!!!)

Japan are teachers to the world! What a shining example they give us...LOVE to Japan and Japanese and their couragous dogs!!

[IndigoStar]

There are good people everywhere, many more than those causing problems. Most want to help others I think...Americans helping Japanese families...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A girl makes mud pies in the dirt, a toddler takes wobbly steps in the grass, a boy picks blueberries and another builds a snowman.
Those are simple pleasures in Oregon, but not for the children of Fukushima, Japan, where a nuclear disaster in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami forced them indoors for months, required them to wear protective gear when they did venture outside — even made them wary of plants, grass and rain.

At least 11 kids and their parents, refugees from Fukushima and other parts of Japan, are visiting Oregon this month and living with U.S. host families as part of a grass-roots effort to give them a break from the stress and health risks they had been facing at home.

But as their brief respites draw to a close, their thoughts are already on the trip back home and what their next moves will be.

“I felt it was necessary to get away from that place where we had a really scary experience, and watch my son feel better and more alive,” Yoshie Arai, 37, who came to Oregon with 10-year-old Tatsuki in late July, said through a translator. “That made me feel sure it was a good decision. But this trip has made me feel really strongly that maybe going back — that’s not really the place to live. … I want to seek other alternatives.”

Yoshie Arai and her son Tatsuki, 10, pick blueberries near Portland, Ore.

More than 46,000 people living in Fukushima Prefecture have left since the triple disaster, the Mainichi Daily News reported this month, in English, citing local government data.

Among them were nearly 7,700 students, with another 1,100 planning to do so during the ongoing summer break, the newspaper quoted education officials as saying. Of the latter, 75 percent were leaving because of radiation concerns.

Worries about the impact of radiation on their children also were paramount for the mothers who brought their families to Oregon.

The government told them daily that there was radiation but not about how it could affect them — just that it wouldn't right away, Mayumi Abe, who traveled to the U.S. with her 3-year-old daughter Karin, said through a translator.

They were told, “Oh, if you worry about it, you can put a mask on and you can kind of wipe yourself off right before you go inside,” she added.

Another mom, Mayumi Fujimori, recounted the horror of learning her 8-year-old daughter, Remika, and other kids had been playing outside when the first reactor exploded at the plant, which eventually suffered meltdowns or partial meltdowns in three of its reactors. Later blasts released radioactive substances into the air and allowed contaminated water to leak into the ocean.

“Something really terrible, something really unimaginable happened,” Fujimori said through tears, noting she only found out about the blast hours after it happened. “I didn’t know what to do and how I could protect my children. I tried to do my best.”

Children under the age of 18 are most sensitive to the effects of radioactive iodine, one of the main isotopes released during the disaster, according to the Centers of Disease Control.

Researchers on Saturday released a study showing that low levels of radioactive iodine had been found in the thyroid glands of children from Fukushima, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

The low levels found in about half the children suggest it is unlikely thyroid cancer rates would rise in the future, but health checks should continue, said Satoshi Tashiro, a Hiroshima University professor who led the study of 1,149 children.

The local government will conduct two health screenings for Fukushima prefecture residents through October, Morikuni Makino of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency wrote in an email to msnbc.com.

In addition to basic health checkups, health-care workers will estimate radiation exposure dose based on food consumption, conduct ultrasound tests on the thyroids of children and teenagers, and perform mental health evaluations. An individual health check specific to pregnant women would also will be conducted, Makino said.

In the last month, radiation levels have reached record highs at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, said its owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company, and more than 1,000 cattle were found to have eaten feed contaminated with radioactive cesium, news agencies reported.

The announcements have stirred greater fears among the Fukushima mothers, some who said they don’t want to go back there.

Arai, whose son has suffered nightmares, nose bleeds and fevers that she attributes to stress, said she had planned to quit her job at a real estate firm before coming to Oregon, but they told her she should just take some time off.

But further reflection hasn’t changed her mind. Arai said she doesn’t think Fukushima is “going to recover to the point that I’d like to see. I don’t think it’s a place for children to live.”

Chifumi Brown, a Japanese-American therapist who is hosting the Arai family, is holding a weekly informal therapy session for the mothers.

“They’re really in the survival mode of needing to get away,” she said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44179518/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/#.Tk--mahLQep

[IndigoStar]

Looks like Japan is recovering well...here's another nice story:

A project using sunflowers to absorb widespread radiation from Fukushima Prefecture's crisis-hit nuclear plant has taken off in Japan and organizers hope that it will spur interaction between people in the prefecture and other areas.

Project organizers have sent sunflower seeds to some 13,000 locations around the country, where the flowers are now in bloom. Sunflowers are said to absorb radiation, and when the seeds from the grown flowers are sent back to Fukushima, they will be planted next year to absorb more radiation from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant and improve soil quality. Organizers hope the project will spur deeper connections between people in Fukushima and the rest of the country.

The project was launched in March, with a group of 10 Iwate Prefecture business managers at the helm. When they began recruiting people to raise the sunflowers in late April, they were swamped with applicants. They ended up sending seeds to people in every other prefecture in the country, and they are now recruiting people within Fukushima to plant the new seeds next summer.

For work such as putting the seeds into bags, the organizers contacted a facility providing jobs for the mentally disabled in Nihonmatsu, which readily accepted.

"We are happy to contribute to such a grand project," said the facility's head, Seiko Watanabe.

After new seeds are harvested, they can be sent back via post, but project organizers hope that some will bring the seeds in person and interact with the people of Fukushima.

Koji Enjoji, 46, a hair salon manager in Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, asked around 50 of his customers to join the project. There are now around 30 sunflowers in front of his salon that have grown to about a meter in height.

"I was wondering what we could do to help, when I heard about the sunflower project and thought, 'This is it!' Every day, looking at the sunflowers and thinking about Fukushima, we get energized thinking about how we're going to do our best here, too," said Enjoji. He says that after harvesting the seeds, he wants to visit Fukushima in person and hear the stories of disaster survivors there.

Project representative Shinji Handa, 33, has received a stream of reports from around the country on the blooming sunflowers. One planting location, a field in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, was borrowed from a patient by Michinori Kojima, 37, the manager of an acupuncture and moxibustion clinic. There, around 2,000 sunflowers are in bloom.

"We're happy that people around the country are thinking of Fukushima's troubles as if they were their own. We want to make the sunflowers a ray of hope for Fukushima and Japan," says Handa.

His dream is to create a "giant labyrinth" out of sunflowers from the project, creating a place for children in Fukushima, many of whom are limiting their time outside because of radiation, to play.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110808p2a00m0na021000c.html