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Schools

From One School Community to Another, A Wish For Recovery

A traditional thousand-crane project, other origami, and funds are all part of Madera Elementary School's outreach to Japanese families still struggling with the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Rie Uzawa, a native of Japan who moved to the United States in 1993, had just gotten off the phone with her mother in Kyoto, Japan when she turned on the television to discover that Japan had been hit by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami. She saw images of an airport wiped out by the tsunami. Although Japan experiences a lot of earthquakes, it was quickly obvious that the March 11 one was particularly destructive, she said, almost unimaginable.

The areas hardest hit are not near Uzawa’s family home, which is why her mother was unaware of the destruction when they spoke on the phone. But Uzawa is familiar with the area and, as a parent, particularly touched by reports of an elementary school of a little more than 100 students in Miyagi prefecture that was flooded toward the end of the school day when water from the ocean overwhelmed a nearby river. The school in Ishinomaki city lost about 70 percent of its students. Of 13 teachers, only three survived. 

Since International Night was approaching at Madera Elementary School, which her son attends, Uzawa thought that evening would be a good opportunity to ask for support from Madera families. She discovered others at the school were interested in doing something to support the victims of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami as well. They asked attendees at the March 24 event to contribute money and, in an effort that especially gave the children a way of showing their support, to make origami cranes. 

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They ended up collecting close to $900 to donate through the Red Cross, most of it at International Night with a few contributions coming in afterward. 

This summer Uzawa and her two children, sixth-grader Daichi and especially eighth-grader Karin, took the cranes from International Night as well as other origami projects made by Teresa Reyes’ third-grade class and put the finishing touches on them. Now she's working on arrangements to send them to the devastated community  with their message of recovery for Japan.  

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