Volunteer activity of cleaning photographs – keep memories of affected areas–

        Now, HARU has been engaged in cleaning photographs damaged by seawater and mud in tsunami.  Japan Self-Defense Forces provides us with photographs and photo albums of which owners have not been found.  We wash the mud off of the photographs.  And we dry them, preserve, and finally return them to residents. The number of photographs is more than 120 thousands, so it will take a lot of time to complete this activity.  We would like to do what we can do now, and clean them one by one, quickly and carefully.

        I would like to introduce a procedure for cleaning photographs. Some photographs are so degraded   that ink is removed or almost removed. If we badly wash the mud off the photographs, ink may be also removed and they may get further injured.  However, if the mud were left unwashed, bacteria would grow and the photo would disappear.  Under these circumstances, we wash away the mud with our fingertips delicately and carefully.  After washing, we hang up the photos with clothespins and put them in the new album.  As to cleaning damaged albums, we clean the mud page by page.  Aside from our activities, photographers are working on making copies of damaged photographs.  How carefully we wash the photos, unless we can remove the bacteria completely, they will eventually fade. Therefore, we try to duplicate the washed photos to preserve them.

        A member of HARU who is in his 1^st year of economics major said, “I feel satisfied when a damaged photo which at first looked impossible to be restored finally got clean after the mud was washed away bit by bit. One day when I was leaving after the activity, a couple who came to pick up photographs found theirs and smiled happily.  This made me think it was worth it. ”

        Another member who is in his 3^rd year of materials major said, “Preserving records like photos for future reference is a very important task.  I also cleaned the back of the photos carefully when a date or some notes were written on its back. I hope I can be of help to keep those memories as far as I can.  When we were cleaning photos, a resident came and found out a photo of him.  The photo had happened to be his friend's. So he brought it to the friend.  This is an episode which made me decide to put in effort in order to return all photographs to their original owners.  We have to complete the cleaning work by Obon (around mid-August).  I will continue this activity.”

        Through the activity of cleaning photos, we would like to send memories to residents as much as possible, and we hope these activities will help reconstruction.  HARU will continue this activity.  We have been working at Yamamoto-chou until now.  Hereafter we will move to Katahira campus and continue the activity.  We will make efforts to return as many photos as we can to affected people in cooperation with many people..