To remember Fukushima, college students across Japan will join on a one-month relay across 30 prefectures that culminates in the capital of Fukushima Prefecture on the anniversary of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
To remember Fukushima, college students across Japan will join on a one-month relay across 30 prefectures that culminates in the capital of Fukushima Prefecture on the anniversary of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
The event, which will cover 6,300 kilometers in two routes, is being organized by the Japan All Student Project, founded by So Sato, 22, a senior at Fukushima University.
When Sato traveled to Kyushu in August, he felt that Fukushima was falling into oblivion only five months after the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant put its name on the map.
“The earthquake has become a thing of the past,” he thought.
Sato set up the Japan All Student Project in November with his friends at the university.
In areas where he does not have acquaintances, he looked for students providing support for quake victims through Twitter and Facebook.
“What we are most worried is that Fukushima will be forgotten by people around the country,” Sato told Rika Matsufuji, 21, a junior at Saga University, when Matsufuji phoned him.
Matsufuji, who read a Twitter message of Sato's in December, was concerned that pumping up the event far from Fukushima could appear insensitive to disaster victims.
“We would like to sow seeds for building a bond with Fukushima, particularly in places away from the prefecture, by working together for the same event,” Sato told Matsufuji.
Runners, who will pass a sash to the next runner, will cover 30 of the nation’s 47 prefectures.
The relays start on Feb. 12 in Okinawa Prefecture for a longer route mainly through prefectures along the Sea of Japan and on Feb. 15 in Oita Prefecture for a shorter route through prefectures on the Pacific Ocean side.
The longer route goes as far as Hokkaido, while the shorter route passes through Osaka Prefecture, Aichi Prefecture and Tokyo.
Members of the Japan All Student Project will travel in a vehicle in prefectures where there are no runners, collecting messages from residents and taking photos of their smiling faces.
The messages and photos will be displayed in central Fukushima on March 11.