Hey, so does anybody remember the Japan earthquake? Didn’t think so. Turns out that the earthquake and tsunami that affected hundreds of thousands and altered Japan’s coastline happened 3 years ago today. I remember how supportive Americans were for like a week, pouring our money into the search and rescue efforts. And then the major news networks stopped talking about it and we were like, “What tsunami?”
In this historic event that Americans so easily overlook,
nearly 16,000 people died, and – perhaps more tragically – over 2,600 remain
missing. That’s almost as many missing as died in 9/11. And if that’s not bad
enough, hundreds of thousands were displaced by the destruction of their
hometowns or the radioactive leakage from the Fukushima reactor. Many of these
people still have nowhere to go. The travel blog Ever In Transit shares some of the stories of the victims.
Most Americans, however, didn’t travel to the affected areas
of Japan to honor the third anniversary; in fact, most Americans don’t seem to
remember the event. The social networks are quiet, and I haven’t even gotten
any hits on the EP I made in the victims’ honor (yes, I’m using a tragic event
to advertise my music. It’s called desperation). It’s hard to imagine that this
was once a cause Americans supported whole-heartedly. But I guess this is what
always happens: we never quite see things through.
So why am I so upset about all this? It’s not like it’s our
own country. It’s not like this was that
big a disaster, not in comparison to tragedies like Haiti’s earthquake from the
previous year. So what is it? I guess it’s just irritating that Americans get
so involved in things and then fail to follow through. The Japanese who were
affected by the tsunami are still facing many challenges, and they certainly were
when Americans forgot about the whole disaster a week after it happened. Look,
it’s nice that so many Americans gave money to help with the disaster relief
efforts, but the same people just a few weeks later showed no interest in the
Japanese people, and it’s too much for them to devote even a single day out of the year
to the memory of the tragedy.
I guess what I’m really saying is that, as nice as it is for
people to give money to foreign aid, I wish we wouldn’t feign interest in these
great humanitarian causes when we can’t even devote ourselves to them for more
than a few days. The Great TÅhoku Earthquake was a very real tragedy to the
Japanese. The thousands who died and the thousands who lost their homes were
very real. But in America, it was little more than a fleeting trend.
For more information on the ongoing recovery effort, check
out these articles:
