Japan Press Weekly

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2011 May 11 - 17 [JCP]

JCP members in quake-hit village

The day after the 3/11 disaster hit the Tohoku region, a village in the Shin’etsu region experienced another major quake. Despite suffering themselves, members of the Japanese Communist Party there are working harder to help restore villagers’ lives.

Sakae is a small village in Nagano Prefecture with a population of 2,300. Early on March 12, an intensity 6 earthquake struck the village. Nearly 1,700 residents had to be evacuated. The houses of all JCP members in the village were totally or partially destroyed. Their farmland was also damaged.

It was dangerous to stay indoors because of continuous aftershocks. On the sixth day after the quake, they were at last able to meet together in a shed. They sometimes held a meeting inside a van.

At the first meeting after the quake, Sato Yasuo, chairman of the JCP Sakae Village Committee, said to the JCP members, “At times like this, we must work harder for the other villagers.” One member said, “There are many elderly people here in Sakae. They may feel lonely if their local community is broken up into smaller pieces.” They reached the conclusion that the need is to take care of each community and requested the village office to not split communities.

As a result, the inhabitants of one community were able to stay together in the same shelter. “I’m glad to be with my neighbors. It comforts me a lot,” said an evacuee.

The Sakae JCP in cooperation with the JCP members of the Nagano Prefectural Assembly negotiated with the Nagano government over temporally dwellings. At first, the local government was going to build only 40 houses, but in response to their request, it decided to construct 55 houses available for all the villagers who had applied for temporary housing.

An elderly person standing in front of his collapsed house said in despair, “I don’t know what I will do after I move into the temporary housing. At my age, I can’t rebuild my house.” The Sakae JCP then requested the village office to construct village-owned accommodation units. They succeeded in having the village administration attach importance to the role of the community in constructing public housing in each community.

Eight part-time workers at a public facility operated by a village-funded company were laid off after the quake. Asked for help by these dismissed workers, the Sakae JCP soon made contact with a local federation of trade unions and arranged a meeting. The eight established their own union right there at the meeting. In their first collective bargaining session with the village mayor, they won a retraction of their dismissals.

The case of Sakae is just one example of the JCP spirit: “Where people suffer, the JCP is there to lend assistance.”