When I read about a displaced Japanese woman named Kyoko, my first urge was congratulate her on her organizational brilliance and foresight. Kyoko has tracked each of her family’s movements on a pocket calendar from the day they left their home in Iwaki on March 12th to their first night in a Tokyo shelter on the 18th. On their way, they spent nights in their car in a parking lot and in line at a gas station. They reunited with relatives and shared food and water with strangers. It’s been a long, hard, tragic week for Japan. Through it all, Kyoko has maintained a record of where she was and when. She says she keeps the calendar because she’s afraid she’ll forget.
While it is Kyoko’s fear of radiation poisoning that motivates her to keep moving south, her fear of forgetting may be what eventually secures her future.
Following disaster, natural or otherwise, a great deal of aid is tied to where people are at certain times. I’m not talking about the food and water and blankets that are being distributed now. I’m talking about the assistance people will receive in a few months once it’s clear they will not soon return home or clear a return won’t ever be possible. For example, housing assistance might be open to someone who left an area on or after a certain date but not to someone who left before. Each person applying for benefits is required to prove that their need is tied to the disaster in question. Dates and locations and detailed knowledge of both will serve as verification.
I work with refugees – people who have fled home because they fear persecution. While the circumstances of their displacement differs from that of Kyoko’s, the hurried decision to leave, the initial belief that they will quickly return and the overwhelming mystery of what comes next are similar. I’ve conducted hundreds, maybe thousands, of interviews, and regardless of culture or education or plain intelligence, dates are tricky and people forget.
If someone had walked into my interview carrying a clear and written record of how they got from A to B, it would have been a great help. But I don’t recall that ever happening. So, I sorted through the details the best I could. But in the end, I don’t really know when I got it right or when my inability to put the timeline together let someone down.
I don’t know what’s in store for the half million Japanese left homeless by the tsunami or the tens of thousands fleeing the smoldering reactors, including Kyoko and her family. But when the time comes to prove that she left Fukushima prefecture after the tsunami, Kyoko will have her calendar to help her remember.
And that might make all the difference.
