SENDAI--While many foreigners fled the country in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, some exhibited more fortitude--returning to Japan to help in the crisis.
SENDAI--While many foreigners fled the country in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake, some exhibited more fortitude--returning to Japan to help in the crisis.
On the morning of April 22, Juan Felipe Torres Alvarez, a 27-year-old doctoral student at Tohoku University from Colombia, arrived at a volunteer center in Sendai's Miyagino Ward. He quickly set to work delivering relief materials by bicycle.
He said he was happy to have the chance to clean or remove broken furniture from the houses of the elderly.
Alvarez was in Colombia on March 11 when the earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan.
Worried about the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant accident, his mother advised him not to go back to Japan for a while.
But Alvarez couldn't stay away. He returned to his university in Sendai on April 12.
Alvarez arrived in Japan when he was 20 years old. He entered Tohoku University, to major in system design engineering, after studying Japanese for a year.
He has studied on a Japanese government scholarship for the last seven years.
He said he felt guilty about being away after the country was hit by the massive earthquake and tsunami.
"I felt like I need to be with all the Japanese, not just my friends and acquaintances," he said.
He said he would like to continue his volunteer activities until Sendai is rebuilt.
Another research student, Marina Guerreiro, from Portugal, was not in Japan, either, when the earthquake hit. But the 24-year-old returned March 24. She has been doing volunteer work ever since. "I respect the Japanese," she said.