With rubble everywhere in sight and jobs nowhere to be found more than four months after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, there is one obvious job for anyone with the proper training and licensing in the devastated regions.
With rubble everywhere in sight and jobs nowhere to be found more than four months after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, there is one obvious job for anyone with the proper training and licensing in the devastated regions.
"Clearing rubble is the only job available to help me survive for the time being," said a 29-year-old student at the Ishinomaki Chubu Driving School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture.
The man was laid off in April after his previous stone material company was hit hard by the quake, and he is now taking courses for operating heavy machinery and large vehicles.
At the school, 20 new entrants a month, four times the enrollment of pre-quake levels, are taking courses to earn a Class I large vehicle license, driving large trucks.
At other driving schools in disaster-affected areas, there are long lines of people trying to earn licenses to drive trucks and operate heavy machinery to clear rubble.
Demand for licenses has surged sharply as unemployment rates have shot up and the need for construction workers has grown significantly after the quake destroyed a number of the region's factories and stores.
When an Asahi Shimbun reporter visited the Rikuzentakata driving school in quake-stricken Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, eight students were learning in turn how to operate a loading shovel to clear land.
The school, offering seven technical courses, increased its number of classes after the quake. The number of students in May was about 150, more than five times the enrollment of the year before. Most of the students, before the temblor, were employees at transportation or fish processing firms in the disaster-hit Sanriku coastal region.
Koshi Kimiwada, 44, a student from the neighboring city of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, worked at a disaster-hit seafood transportation firm before the March 11 quake. After the area's fish catch plummeted in the wake of the quake, he was laid off in mid-March and forced to scrape by on unemployment insurance. With his income down 60 percent, Kimiwada is concerned whether he can afford to send his daughter, a high school senior, to a university in Tokyo.
After finding no jobs listed at a nearby job-placement office that would pay him enough to support his family, he enrolled in the school, hoping he will be able to land a construction job. Assisted by school financial aid, Kimiwada said he now has renewed hope of rebuilding his life.
In Shirakawa, Fukushima Prefecture, the Nanko construction machinery operating training facility has reached its maximum number of students in certain programs. Students learn how to level land, demolish buildings and operate special vehicles capable of maneuvering and operating on rubble-filled grounds.
There is also a long waiting list for some of the courses offered at Hitachi Construction Machinery Co.'s training facility in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture.
According to the employment division of Iwate prefectural government, job openings for disaster victims within the prefecture are mostly rubble clearing and other construction-related jobs. Within the service area of the Ishinomaki job-placement office in Miyagi Prefecture, the number of construction-related job offers soared in April, about five times the number a year ago, fueled by a sharply growing demand for construction workers in the aftermath of the quake.
(This article was written by Mami Ueda and Noriyuki Kaneta.)