{"id":199995,"date":"2024-06-28T10:20:46","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T20:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=199995"},"modified":"2024-06-28T10:39:57","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T20:39:57","slug":"tsunami-survivor-gives-back-to-lahaina-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2024\/06\/28\/tsunami-survivor-gives-back-to-lahaina-survivors\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> alum: Tsunami survivor gives back to Lahaina survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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10 high schoolers from Lahaina flew to Japan in March to participate in the program.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miku Narisawa, a graduate of the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa<\/a>, vividly recalls the terrifying night in March 2011 when a deadly tsunami struck northeastern Japan. At just 12 years old, Narisawa sought refuge on the third floor of her elementary school. She remembers the haunting sound of car alarms blaring for hours as she, her sisters, and mother sheltered with hundreds of others in a classroom, anxiously awaiting for the tsunami to pass.<\/p>\n

“We weren\u2019t sure if our house survived, and then obviously I was thinking maybe not because all I could see was [that] our small community was a lake. No buildings were there,” Narisawa explained. “Our small community was a lake and there were so many debris in our community, ocean, river.”<\/p>\n

K\u014dkua (help) Lahaina<\/h2>\n
\"Miku
Miku Narisawa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those painful memories resurfaced when Narisawa heard about the devastating fires that swept through Lahaina in August 2023. Immediately, she felt compelled to help Lahaina\u2019s students, just as she had been supported after the historic Tohoku tsunami years earlier. Narisawa was a participant in Tohoku Rainbow for Japan Kids, a program that brought young Japanese tsunami survivors to Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> for rest and recovery.<\/p>\n

“The amount of support that we received throughout Rainbow for Japan Kids was immense, and I knew that I needed to give something back to Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>,” said Narisawa.<\/p>\n

In March, Narisawa partnered with the U.S.-Japan Council\u2019s TOMODACHI Initiative and Japan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to launch the TOMODACHI Kibou for Maui program<\/a>. In Japanese, tomodachi means friends and kibou means hope. The initiative brought 10 teens from Lahainaluna and one from Maui High School to Higashimatsushima, Miyagi, Japan, where they learned about disaster recovery and saw firsthand Narisawa\u2019s community\u2019s remarkable rebuilding from the tsunami.<\/p>\n

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Odyssey Nature Japan offers immersive programs in natural environments.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Part of the trip overseas involved students participating in an educational organization Narisawa founded in April 2023, Odyssey Nature Japan<\/a>, which provides children with nature-based programs. The students from Lahaina met local seaweed and oyster farmers who shared lessons learned from the tsunami and the importance of inter-relation between land and ocean.<\/p>\n

“During natural disasters, ocean takes our lives away sometimes but I take it as part of [a] life cycle of nature,” Narisawa said. “What I learned from March 11 was that ocean provides the life lesson to take care of our Earth.”<\/p>\n

Kibou pathway<\/h2>\n

Narisawa is currently working on a PhD<\/abbr> in marine environmental anthropology at Tohoku University in Japan. While at UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa, she earned a BA<\/abbr> in peace and conflict resolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This July, she will host a second group of high school students from Maui who are scheduled to travel to Japan for the TOMODACHI Kibou for Maui program.<\/p>\n

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Narisawa leads Lahaina students through her hometown, which rebounded from the tsunami.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miku Narisawa helped launch a program to bring students affected by the Lahaina wildfires to regions in Japan that have recovered from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1597,9],"class_list":["post-199995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-maui-wildfires","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t