BRAZIL: Family of Japanese-Brazilians who had their homes wiped away by the massive March 11 tsunami struggle to rebuild their lives in Brazil

Record ID: 463617

  • Title: BRAZIL: Family of Japanese-Brazilians who had their homes wiped away by the massive March 11 tsunami struggle to rebuild their lives in Brazil
  • Date: 29th April 2011
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF TAKASHI FAMILY WALKING THROUGH JAPANESE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LIBERDADE
  • Embargoed: 14th May 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Brazil, Brazil
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVADC29WLJN739M5Z5J7C2ZNY9I9
  • Story Text: When Roseli Takashi and her sister-in-law Mary Takashi heard the tsunami alerts in the northeastern city of Onagawa on March 11, they raced out of their homes with their daughters in time to save themselves. But their homes were not spared.
    Both women of Brazilian and Japanese citizenship had to spend days in a cramped school gym sharing the scarce water and food supplies that arrived to one of the country's worst-hit areas.
    Their daughters, Michelle and Marina, aged 13 and 9, were also born in Brazil but left to Japan as babies and never learned to speak Portuguese. Now, nearly two months after the disaster, the Takashis are struggling to restore their lives in Brazil's business capital Sao Paulo.
    They were located by Brazilian volunteers nearly ten days after the quake and brought back to their birth country along with other nationals by Brazil's foreign ministry.
    It is in the downtown district of Liberdade that the Takashis find a slice of Japan and feel more at home at least twice a week. Roseli said the girls were having a difficult time adapting and missed the friends they left behind without saying goodbye.
    Marina and Michelle usually frown when they are spoken to in Portuguese. But they are working hard to change that with the free lessons they are taking at the Japenese-Brazilian Culture Center.
    Mary Takashi, whose Japanese husband stayed behind to rebuild their home, said she could only thank everyone in Brazil for giving her the strength to start from scratch.
    "I'm very thankful for all of this and to everyone who helped us when we were still in Japan. Everything I'm wearing now was donated because I only had the clothes I wearing when I ran away. So I'm very thankful to all the people here who helped us with donations, with support and with a friendly conversation and I'll certainly never forget all this," she said, standing in the library of the Japanese center.
    Roseli Takashi, who's living in her mother's small apartment with her husband and daughter, said she had high hopes for the future.
    "We are very happy to have been able to escape to a safe country and happy to be alive and to have arrived here. But at the same time now comes a difficult time with the children trying to adapt. But we will also be able to overcome this; I'm positive," she said.
    Roseli's brother, 46-year-old Ilton Toshiaka, who had been working in a fishing company in Onagawa for the past five years, is also trying to rebuild his life in Sao Paulo.
    He has been seeking help to find a job through an office that assists foreign workers from Japan.
    Toshiaka said he was happy to return to Brazil, but felt that part of his heart was still in Japan.
    "I came back with an ambiguous feeling because I am happy to be close to the people I love and to be in my birth land, but on the other hand I also feel sad when I think about the friends I left behind and the people I like who stayed behind and who are going through difficulties because the situation there is still critical," he said.
    Tens of thousands were made homeless by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which left 27,000 people dead or missing and damaged a nuclear power plant in Fukushima.
    Toshiaka said he felt lucky that he had somewhere to go while 137,000 others are still living in the thousands of shelters set up in schools, gyms and community centers along the northeast coast.
    Since his arrival, Toshiaka has met a few times with the head of the workers' assistance center Reimei Yoshioka.
    Yoshioka said the office also assists people with other matters such as legal and health issues.
    "We are committed to helping them in whatever we can to try to fulfill their basic needs, especially in terms of finding jobs because we are associated to the ministry of labor. Therefore our main concern is to find them a place inside a company that can take advantage of their work capacity," he said.
    Like the Takashis, dozens of other tsunami refugees are trying to start anew in Brazil, which is home to some 1.5 million Japanese immigrants or descendants.
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