Miya Moore, an 8-year-old American girl at the time, was saddened by the devastation of the disaster area that she saw through the media, and said, “I built a park for children in the Minato district, where my grandmother (the deceased) was from. I had a dream that I want to. In order to make this dream a reality, Miya’s parents and many people from her hometown of Ohio joined forces and started the “Ishinomaki Playground Project”. We, Playground of Hope, have raised generous support (funds and volunteers) from J.P. Morgan and the Grateful Crane Ensemble, a non-profit Japanese American theater company in California, and have been involved in the construction of the playground. I joined this dream by conducting. This collaboration, as part of a restoration project for Matsunami Park that was damaged by the tsunami, has become the most memorable and meaningful activity PoH has ever undertaken. In addition to large wooden play equipment, this was a big project, installing six health play equipment and laying green grass on a vast 2,500 square meter land.
On the day of the opening event, 450 local people gathered to celebrate the park’s revitalization with a fun live performance by Eric Jacobsen, a mobile zoo, and a barbecue.
“I mustered up all my courage to come this far today.” This is what I heard from a nursery school teacher at the opening event. “I was scared to see the landscape that had changed so much and no one was there. It was also painful to go back to the place where a child I knew had died. I have never been here since the earthquake. That’s why I mustered up the courage to come today.But I’ve never seen so many children in this area before.I’m glad I came today.”
I sincerely hope that the sight of children playing happily in Matsunami Park will brighten up this area.
