Disabled people who came from shelters

It’s hard to lend a hand to weaker people when you’re evacuated and weak yourself.

Tada: At the time of the disaster, I was working at a disabled counseling center in front of Ishinomaki station. After it happened, I went to one of the houses I make rounds to for work. There was nothing left on the first floor (because of tsunami damage), yet there was a severely mentally and physically handicapped person living on the second floor.

Then when I talked with that person’s parents, they said that at first (when the disaster happened), they took refuge in a nearby school. But they had to leave that shelter that night, so they stayed in their car for a long time. Their child is severely handicapped, so at night the child had made noise (because of symptoms), and the other people there had said heartless things. But it got hard just staying in their car, so they went back to their house. Then, the first floor was destroyed, but they were somehow able to get to the second floor, so they went up there. Hearing this story made me realize that when people are in a difficult enough situation, rather than feeling sorry for someone with a disability, they’ll just be like, “Shut up, we can’t sleep.”

Kayoko: Yeah, that’s who you become.

Tada: What you don’t know is scary. That’s what it really means.

Yasuko: But I think it’s almost always like that.

Tada: That’s why so many disabled people and their families couldn’t go to shelters.

Kayoko: So you know, these disabled people are blamed by non-disabled people in an atmosphere where no one understands. They don’t feel comfortable staying in shelters, so they stay in their cars, or they have nowhere to go but their houses even though the houses could collapse at any time. That must be really hard.