When the Silent Becomes the Vocal: the Emotional Lessons to be Learned from Quake Relief in Japan

Hope, unfortunately, has been on the decline. As efforts to seek out those lost in the tsunamis are undertaken, the only results are more dead bodies, more economic damages, and more tears from families and friends. Lost lives are unavoidable in a calamity of such a size, and a national humanitarian emergency is not only logically justified but rationally necessary and imminent. In her responses to the cries of help from the people, Japan, both at the government and private levels, shined and showed the world a fine example of disaster relief.

At the government level, immediate efforts are taken by national and municipal levels to open up facilities for those stranded far away from home. Food and blankets were provided for free while government officials did their best to tally those who are missing and assist with people's desires to communicate with their loved ones. The efficiency, the transparency, and the passion with which the government bureaucracy that contrast sharply with the usual small-island narrow-mindedness and irrational calls of nationalism.

On the corporate side, the acts were, and still are, even more laudable. TV stations stopped all broadcasts to announce the latest developments in disaster areas, with some accepting and announcing the names of those who are still not in touch with their families. Beverage and food companies distributed their products freely in disaster areas. The selfless profit-losing acts of the companies are by all means respectable and admirable.

And then, there were the common people. It is perhaps a collectivist Confucian society-and-family-oriented culture at its best. The people, normally silent, emotionless, and not expressive of individual opinions, suddenly became caring and animated in their efforts to soothe each other against inevitable mental tensions. To risk sounding a bit insensitive, I have to say that many people that I came to observe in this massive exodus and chaos were human....with blood, flash, and real emotions...something that I observed from them, unfortunately, for the very first time.

This was especially true of those stuck at work due to trains being halted everywhere. It is at this moment that I realized how important working non-stop, followed by work-like drinking with coworkers, somehow becomes a necessary social-bonding exercise in preparation for these moments when individual humans are shown to be weak and helpless. It is that comrade-in-arms mutual understanding among the coworkers that help them survive the battlefield everyday, both at work, and now, in a real natural disaster.

This sort of "camaraderie at work" was true even for the foreigners not bought into the whole "work til you drop" idea at a Japanese company. One of my coworkers said well in a blog post, "... this quake reaffirmed the special relationship that we have with one another. Even though all cell phone communication was halted, we managed to communicate by Facebook and email, providing support for one another in this strange and somewhat scary time..."

At the core of every disaster relief is the human element, not how many relief goods delivered or how many rescue teams sent in. While food and news of successful rescues do provide emotional reliefs for those stuck in precarious conditions, what ultimately make the conditions tolerable is a matter of human connections, mended together through support in words and action. Sharing a laugh, a survival story, or a piece news become even more important than sharing a bottle of water or a meal.

And as people glued to the TV stations showing people still in need of rescue in rooftops through their aerial coverages, the folly of pure materialistic "humanitarian relief" is fully exposed. In times like this, joy and gratitude can easily defeat hunger and thirst, while loneliness and isolation easily cause more scars than lost homes and wealth. The emotional element of disaster relief need to be more emphasized in future endeavors of this sort.