To Japan, with Hope

As the world stays riveted with the tragedy unfolding in Japan in front of our TV sets, I cannot help but tip my hat to the Japanese people with admiration and inspiration. This may be the worst earthquake that the nation will experience in this lifetime, but I could not overlook their preparedness, the calmness by which the citizens handled such magnitude of an event and how organized they were.

Perhaps because they are a people that has come to accept natural calamities as a part of their lives, their readiness and bravery in action is something for the rest of the world to learn from. As news footage on the various networks revealed the earthquake’s and the tsunami’s devasation, we saw the Japanese people taking cover, being unnerved but not helpless or petrified to the point of disability. Reports indicate the warnings were as short as 5 minutes and citizens all over the different cities like Sendai, Minamisoma and others, sprung to shelter as far away from the epicenter of the quake and body of waters as they could. Reports further state that the death toll may not be as high for a natural disaster with this intensity and that is good news the world and especially the Japanese people would want to hear.

Consider this track record, in 1917, a Typhoon ravaged Japan with 4,000 fatalities; in 1923, an earthquake claimed 143,000 lives; in 1945, an atomic bomb caused 136,000 deaths; but by the start of the 21st Century, Japan has managed to be the world’s most developed country in 2007 and the 17th richest country in 2010. In the coming days, as the aftermath of Japan’s March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami unravels, undoubtedly we will witness a people and a country, displaced, injured and battered; but I would venture to say they will not be down for long.