2011年4月1日金曜日

'The Worst Situation I've Ever Seen'

なんと3月16日に載せた女川出身の友達の日記がドイツ新聞雑誌のSPIEGELに載りました。
そのブログです↓
http://yukakaneyama.blogspot.com/2011/03/mixi-twitter-id-yukakaneyama-m9.html


私はまったく知らなかったのですが、女川に遊びに来たこともあるドイツ人の友人がこの会社に就職してたみたいです。
このブログを見て、独訳したそうな。

ネットってすごいですねー。
女川を飛び越え、ドイツまで!

ご報告までに抜粋して転載します。
ドイツ語はわからないので、英語のインターナショナル版で・・・

AERAやNHKの取材も受けたそうなので、もしかしたら他で目にしたことがある方もいらっしゃるかもしれませんね。


以下、SPIEGEL International の転載

'The Worst Situation I've Ever Seen'

Klaus Buchmüller is an almost 20-year veteran of the Technische Hilfswerk (THW), Germany's federal emergency relief agency. Buchmüller has brought aid to places such as Afghanistan, the Congo and Iraq, and he arrived in Tokyo as the head of a THW team some 40 hours after the quake had struck. "This is the worst situation I've ever seen," he says, adding that no one was prepared to deal with an earthquake, tsunami and potential nuclear disaster at the same time. "If I would have presented this kind of scenario in a training exercise, people would have called me crazy."
The phone on Buchmüller's desk has been ringing nonstop for days. Some of the callers are also Europeans who are stuck in the catastrophe area and desperate to get out. Transportation has been limited, there are fuel shortages, and the streets are often blocked by mountains of debris. There has yet to be a complete evacuation of the emergency areas.
In these places, many are facing shortages of crucial necessities: food, water and warmth. Though famous for their toughness, even the Japanese are starting to show signs of stress. Mako Matsukawa survived the destruction of her hometown of Onagawa, a small coastal city in the hardest-hit Miyagi prefecture. The 19-year-old university student had taken refuge in a middle-school gymnasium, whose windows had been shattered by the earthquake.
Matsukawa says that it took two days before food arrived and that, even then, she only got half a bowl of soup. Later, she and her father descended the hill into the tsunami-destroyed city, which used to be home to almost 10,000 people. Now, the city was just pile after pile of debris. When night came, the survivors lit fires in ditches and roasted fish washed in by the tsunami.


Food Lines

Matsukawa believes that people here have reached the limit of their patience. "Even though many people tried to ensure that children and the elderly were the first to eat, in practice it was first come, first served. In the end I was lucky enough to get some food. But there were many people who got nothing."
After a while Matsukawa couldn't stand the city any longer. The streets stank of fish, and the people reeked of smoke. There were only makeshift toilets and crowds of people lined up in front of them.
In the end, she and her family made their way to Sendai, the hard-hit city with a million inhabitants. There, they finally found enough to eat. "In the evening, we ate warm rice," she says, "and I was filled with joy."
But food supplies are also tight in Sendai and the stores' shelves are empty. With little external help coming in, Mayor Emiko Okuyama could only appeal to the public spirit of her city's inhabitants in an address. "Until we reach the point where there is enough food and shelter, I ask you to share provisions a little bit more," she said.


原文はこちらから。
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752177,00.html

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