Schools
Local Kids Send Letters of Hope to Japan
A Japanese woman in Fremont started a project at a local school to send letters to students in Sendai, Japan. More than 300 students, including at Danville and Pleasanton schools, are participating.
Disasters have a way of connecting and mobilizing people.
The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan has done just that for a group of East Bay students and a Fremont woman with a strong connection to the community affected by the disaster.
Yuki Saito-Miller, born and raised in Sendai, Japan, where the magnitude 9.0 earthquake was centered, has mobilized more than 300 students across the East Bay, including several classes at in Danville and students at Fairlands Elementary in Pleasanton, to send messages of hope to children in Japan.
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Saito-Miller is collecting drawings and letters to send to three elementary schools in Sendai, inspired by her 6-year-old son, who is "very aware of and concerned about what is happening in Japan," she says.
Students in her son’s first-grade class at Niles Elementary in Fremont created drawings and letters with messages of care and concern to send “from kids to kids.”
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The project spread to other schools in the East Bay, through friends who also wanted to help.
Saito-Miller says she wanted to “provide an opportunity to personalize the tragedy and build a bridge of emotional support to other children in Japan.”
These “positive messages" in English and drawings that “transcend language” could have a lasting impact on young children coping with the disaster beyond the faceless monetary and supply donations, she says.
The project is also a way for Saito-Miller to cope with her sadness about a disaster that took a toll on her family, hometown and country.
She moved to the United States in 1999 and lives in Fremont with her son and husband. The majority of her immediate and extended family, including her parents, and childhood friends, still live in Sendai and farther north.
She says news of the devastation “really hit me hard,” unlike anything she’s experienced, and has "forever changed" where she comes from.
Although her neighborhood was spared the direct effects of the tsunami, the earthquake seriously damaged homes and property, and some neighbors were killed.
The weekend after the disaster was “the longest weekend of my life,” Saito-Miller says, as she tried to locate family and friends.
It took three days to find her father and she says she was one of the lucky ones whose loved ones survived.
They have shared chilling accounts of the disaster and its aftermath, as the country tries to recover while grappling with a nuclear crisis.
Their strength and civility in the face of hardship not seen for generations, Saito-Miller says, inspires cultural pride. She calls the experience “life-changing” and “a wake-up call.”
What started as a way to help in her son’s classroom spread quickly across the East Bay, at first through friends.
Amy Antonini of Pleasanton wanted to “do something more” beyond contributing money.
Walking with her sons to Fairlands Elementary after the earthquake and tsunami, she heard their fears of a tsunami wave crashing over the Pleasanton Ridge.
Antonini notes that children see Japan as a developed nation, similar to the United States, and this makes them feel like “it could happen here.”
She told school officials and her network of friends about Saito-Miller’s project, to get their support.
At , five classes from first through the fourth grade are participating. Kelli DeMichiel, a first-grade teacher, has gathered more than 100 drawings and letters to be sent.
DeMichiel says her students are concerned about where children in Japan will live, whether they have enough to eat and if the country will be able “to clean it all up.”
All of the children knew about the tsunami, she says, but “not all knew about the earthquake.” She was “very impressed with how eager and excited they were” to participate, as well as how carefully they worked on their drawings and letters.
Saito-Miller is collecting the drawings and letters for Sendai through Friday. Her plan is for the package to arrive in time for the start of the Japanese school year in April.
Saito-Miller, who has a background in photojournalism, plans to return to Sendai in July with her son to witness her country’s “extraordinary strength in the midst of ordinary life.”
If you would like your child to participate, email yuki.saitomiller@gmail.com.
