Women’s Group Busy Making Present for Elementary School Graduates in Ofunato, Iwate Pref. (1)

Women’s Group Busy Making Present for Elementary School Graduates in Ofunato, Iwate Pref. (1)

March 7, 2012

A group of about 20 women at a temporary housing site in Matsuzaki Town, Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, are busy creating cloth-coated “matsubokkuri” pine cones as a present for graduates of a local elementary school.
The Yamagishi Temporary Housing Site Ladies’ Club, so called by the women’s group, was launched in November last year. The purpose was to keep those separately living at small housing units at the site from becoming isolated by providing an opportunity for residents to have communication with each other about their matters of concern. After the start of the group, members agreed to make handicrafts, mainly cloth-made footwear and small bags, in order to seek support for their life from a broad range of people by selling their goods. Their activity at a meeting place within the housing site has been helped by Toshio Niinuma, a city-appointed support manager in charge of the housing site.
The housing site is set up at the compounds of Matsuzaki Elementary School, which became an evacuation center to accommodate residents in the region just after the disaster. Classrooms and the gym at the school returned to normal a few months later, but the playground was converted into a site for temporary housing units. “We feel very sorry to them (schoolchildren), because we have taken away their place to play in,” said Yuriko Kikuchi, the leader of the women’s group. “Therefore, we have decided to make cute matsubokkuri pine cones as a present for the 50 graduates,” said Kukuchi, a former city office worker. (The second photo from the top shows Ms. Kikuchi holding a box filled with matsubokkuri pine cones.)

-Survivor: My life saved by 5-year-old granddaughter-
One year has passed since the disaster, but sad memories linked to the tsunami waves sometimes revisit the women at the Yamagishi housing site. Soon after the strong tremor occurred, Katsuyo Kushibiki went to Matsuzaki Elementary School and a nearby kindergarten because her five grandchildren were attending there. She received the grandchildren from teachers and took four of them to their homes. But she had to stay with a fifth, a five-year-old girl, named Rui, “because her parents were immediately unable to be here to receive their daughter,” said Kushibiki, a former school teacher. Accompanied with her husband, she climbed up to a higher place above their house with Rui, People were watching big tsunami waves coming from the offing from there, but “I spread myself over Rui’s body and held her tight so that she may not see the dreadful scene.” The scene was “too horrible for a small child to see,” she said. While looking up at her grandmother, Rui asked, “Grandma. Is this place all right? The girl repeatedly asked so. Kushibiki replied “It’s OK. It’s OK.” But she had become rather anxious. “I asked my husband what to do and then, he decided to escape to an even higher place.” That decision saved the life of the three.
Midori Kikuchi, who is unrelated to Yuriko Kikuchi, has been proud of her father, who originated “wakame” seaweed farming in the 1950s for the first time in Japan. She served as leader of the women’s club in her community before the disaster. But the tsunami disaster made her and other people in her community to live “a primitive life” in the first few weeks, said Midori Kikuchi. “We, women at the evacuation center, decided who should be in charge of what kind of job,” she said. “We had a lot of jobs there to do—washing clothes, cleaning, cooking and others. We went to a nearby swamp for washing and we cooked rice with the pot,” she recalled.
Kushibiki's husband became sick due to strong stress when they were at the evacuation facility. He consulted a doctor when a traveling medical team visited the facility and he was advised to move to a hospital in an inland city for a rest. Her husband has regained some health.