Japanese students donate Yutu relief goods

A group of Japanese students presented a donation to the CNMI in response to the Super Typhoon Yutu devastation in late October 2018.

The Japan Youth Memorial Association, a Tokyo-based Japanese non-profit organization, announced last Tuesday that they would be sending a team of volunteer members to Saipan and Tinian last week to donate disaster relief funds collected to assist in the recovery.

According to a statement from the JYMA, they would be visiting both the Saipan Mayor’s Office and the Tinian Mayor’s Office last Friday.

“After hearing the news of Super Typhoon Yutu and the destruction it had caused in the CNMI, the student members of JYMA called through its newsletter and internet for donations to alleviate the condition and help reconstruct the damaged houses and infrastructures,” the statement said.

Four JYMA members were scheduled to visit the Saipan Mayor’s Office Friday at 9:30am and the Tinian Mayor’s Office at 2pm to deliver the relief funds.

“Although the amount is minimal compared to the magnitude of destruction [Super] Typhoon Yutu has caused, JYMA strongly wishes that their effort would demonstrate the sympathy and friendship of the people of Japan and strengthen the ties between Japan and the Marianas again that was once weakened due to the declining numbers of the Japanese visitors in the last few decades,” a statement from the organization said.

Alongside their visit, the students also intend to repair a 1971 monument erected on Tinian that has “long been forgotten” and has its plaques missing, which reportedly contained words of comfort to the souls of war victims of all nationalities.

JYMA is an organization founded in 1967 consisting mainly of Japanese university students. The organization noted that they had been engaged in memorial activities for those who perished during World War II.

“JYMA continued its activities mainly through cooperating with the Japanese government to recover the remains of the war dead from former battlefields, namely through training and dispatching personnel for the recovery and investigation missions,” the statement noted.

“In addition, in order to promote international goodwill with the countries and areas that were involved in the war, JYMA conducts various international exchange and cooperation activities, such as sanitation and hygiene promotion, provision of scholarship to students with financial difficulties, reforestation projects, exchange and homestay programs, among others. With the people of the Northern Mariana Islands, JYMA has carried out several exchange programs of high school and university students in recent years,” it added.