Today is the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Japanese Tohoku earthquake disaster. When disasters happen, news sources tend to focus on dramatic statistics like the number of deaths or the number of homes destroyed, and not so much on the very long process of recovery. In the 21st century, though, it’s much easier to find videos on the internet produced by the disaster victims themselves. Unfortunately, as in the Japanese disaster, language barriers can stop the messages reaching far beyond the disaster area.

So I thought I’d translate one of the videos. It’s about Omoide Kaeru, a non-profit organisation that’s been restoring and returning items found washed up after the tsunami hit Sendai. The video mostly talks about photos, but the group has also been handling personal documents like certificates.

By the way, the original video is from 2013, but Omoide Kaeru is still working in 2016.