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YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

May 14, 2008

The Great Sichuan Earthquake

The Great Sichuan Earthquake has reportedly caused several tens of thousands casualty and just about the same number still being buried alive or dead. I imagine how deep parents’ griefs in most of families must be for their loss of only child. The words squeezed out of mouths of local people answering an interview of TV sounded very impressive, “Government office buildings are strongly built but schools, other public buildings and private houses are all shoddy construction. The lifeline of electricity and water service is completely ruined. This was all caused by corruption of government officials who approved construction of such buildings.” Emergency assistances of funds and physical supports are being offered from many countries but the basic policy of Chinese government seems to decline human supports for a while because of the reason of “traffic interruption of roads”, although they are expressing gratitude for those kind offers.

The military junta of Myanmar rejects all assistances from international community despite the big damages done to the country by cyclone; however, situation might be different in China with Beijing Olympics coming soon so that they need to appeal “international collaboration”, which gives them not much room of choice but to finally accept assistance offers. To have made things even worse is that earthquake’s epicenter was right in the autonomous prefecture of Aba Tibetan tribe and the most of disaster areas are politically sensitive because of the insurgency in March. It is naturally understandable for Chinese government not to welcome large number of foreigners coming into the area. Situation being as such, buried children must be dying one after another.

In Myanmar, it is obviously apparent that the needed support money and emergency provisions are not reaching people who really need them. On the TV screen I saw a mother who evacuated over the boarder to Thailand by holding in her arms half a year baby murmuring to wish for survival of her child at least. The mother in TV overlapped with the image of my mother who kept running by shouldering me on her back under the big air-raid when I was three years old.

The election forced through in Myanmar when more than hundred thousand people were suffering from the disaster made me really felt outrageous beyond description. In Japan and all over the world, I feel that long time has passed since we lost the great spirits in the world of politics where we used to live by taking others’ suffering, grief and pain as if they were our own to share them together. Social mechanism might be rejecting such type of a leader. Thinking all this leads me, after all, to my determination that I must even work harder to foster children of high mind and broad heart cultivated on the basis of recognizing preciousness of life.

This is the latest news coming to me now. It was officially decided that Astronaut Soichi Noguchi is to be sent to ISS (International Space Station) for a long stay onboard after fall next year following Astronaut Koichi Wakata who is slated to board space shuttle expected to be launched at the end of this year. I will later let you know of the details.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)