Pitt doctor recalls trip to Japan

When Dr. Atsunori Nakao arrived in northeast Japan four days after a massive earthquake and… When Dr. Atsunori Nakao arrived in northeast Japan four days after a massive earthquake and tsunami ravaged parts of the island nation, he quickly found that one unlikely medicine often worked better than the most advanced pharmaceuticals.

“Sometimes a piece of Hershey’s chocolate worked the best with patients,” said Nakao, a cardiothoracic transplantation specialist at UPMC. “We saw so many sad stories, and sometimes it was the kindness that mattered more than the medicine.”

Nakao traveled to his home nation of Japan as part of a medical disaster team organized by a Japanese nonprofit in early March, distributing medicine and treating injured people at a number of impromptu shelters across the country. He recounted his experiences yesterday at an information session sponsored by the Graduate School for Public and International Affairs.

About 15 people attended the event, including many of the GSPIA students studying international development and disaster management. They listened to Nakao and others share first-hand stories about the continuing effort to recover from the Japanese disaster and asked questions about the best ways to contribute to the relief efforts.

Not all of the information Nakao shared was new, but students in attendance were compelled by his anecdotes and the extensive slide show he presented. During his talk, Nakao showed several dozen pictures of damage and relief efforts.

“I can’t really tell you how bad the situation was,” Nakao said. “It was as bad as you’ve probably heard.”

During his tour of damaged areas, Nakao said he saw tens of thousands of people living in shelters without heat and electricity.

“One of the main problems that is still persisting in the country is the lack of power,” Nakao said.

The Japanese government has reported that the earthquake knocked out about 25 percent of the nation’s power plants, including the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, which for weeks threatened to go into a full meltdown but now appears to be under control.. That reduction in output has put a strain on relief efforts and had a ripple effect on the country’s economy, wreaking havoc on the supply chain of many goods.

Pitt graduate student Aya Okada, who made a presentation during the event, also discussed the issues of power. She shared pictures with the audience that her mother, a Japanese citizen, sent a few weeks after the quake.

The images showed swaths of empty shelves in once-bustling super markets and meager plates of rations distributed by relief workers.

“Even in areas that haven’t been directly damaged by the earthquake, there are major shortages of amenities like bread and milk and other vital products,” Okada said. “What’s striking is that there is no shortage of the goods themselves, but rather a shortage of power to manufacture packaging and to ship the goods. It’s an extremely complex problem.”

Okada is pursuing a Ph.D. in international development and disaster management, with a focus on the structure and function of Japanese nonprofits. She outlined the work that these groups are doing in the wake of the disaster.

She said the disaster relief effort has been remarkably successful after a slow start. For instance, the Japanese Red Cross has raised $1.6 billion from domestic and international sources during the first month following the earthquake and tsunami.

It took the Japanese Red Cross almost a year to raise that much money following the Kobe earthquake that damaged parts of southern and central Japan in January 1995, Okada said.

“So far over 43,800 volunteers have been mobilized,” Okada said. “That’s a big number of volunteers in such a short period of time.”

Okada said that there are many lessons for GSPIA students and others to take out of the Japanese disaster, and that her own dissertation is going to focus heavily on the relief efforts.

“It is important to ask how do big organizations and small organizations interact and overcome massive damages like this, particularly nonprofits and government,” Okada said. “The effort has been a successful one so far, and it is important to always find ways to improve.”

Another GSPIA student, Tomomi Korenaga, closed the event with a quick presentation on the best ways for Pitt students to get involved with relief efforts.

She said the best move for U.S. students is to work with groups that are already well-established and operating in Japan, like the Japanese Red Cross.

“Japan is a well-developed country with well-developed groups that could really benefit from financial and other contributions from all of us,” she said.