Watari Primary School was supposed to have the tree planting ceremony of the seedling of the bombed kaki tree on 13 April 2011. However, because of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster, hundreds of people had to evacuate to Fukushima-shi and Watari Primary School was also used as one of the evacuation centers, and the radiation problem thereafter, the school had to give up the tree planting.
When three schools in Italy, Istituto Comprensivo Statale di Trenzano (planted the tree on 24 March 2010), Istituto Comprensivo Statale di Bagnolo Mella (planted the tree on 18 May 2011) and Istituto Comorensivo Statale di Gussago heard about the disaster in March, they collected donations to encourage children at Watari Primary School. Children in Italy collected donations little by little by selling kaki tree postcards and saving their pocket money, and sent it through Mr. Rosario Manisera of Associazione cultural italo-giapponese Fuji.
On 13 September we, Tatsuo Miyajima and Yoriko Miyajima, visited the school led by Mr. Tetsuya Kodama, an officer of the municipal office who was helping the project, and delivered donations from Italy. We passed it to Principal Eiko Yoshida and two pupil representatives, and talked about the project as well. Children gave us a cheerful message “We are going to use it carefully!.”
Watari Primary School has a total of 638 pupils with 4 classes in each grade. They did decontamination work in their schoolyard and the radioactivity level has reduced, however, even now children are allowed to play outside only up to two hours per day. The school’s sports day will be held but is also going to be a shorter 2-hour version. Despite these difficulties, pupils are trying hard at their indoor activities and indeed the school’s brass band won the Prefectural Governor’s Prize and the chorus group won the Gold Award in the prefectural competition. We were very impressed by the positive attitude of these children.
