At 4.46pm on Saturday, a minute's silence will be held and the Canberra Rotary Peace Bell beside Lake Burley Griffin will be tolled as the 10th anniversary of the devastating Japan earthquake and tsunami are remembered in the Canberra Nara Peace Park at Yarralumla.
The earthquake struck off the Pacific Coast northeast of Tokyo on March 11, 2011, at 2.46pm local time, 4.46pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. The earthquake triggered a tsunami and the death toll from the twin disasters was almost 16,000 people.
In Canberra, since 2013, the ACT branch of the Australia-Japan Society has been helping to bring child survivors of the tsunami to the national capital, initially as a way to escape the horror and have some downtime, and later to spend time at school with Australian school children, at Radford College in Bruce.
The Canberra connection was forged in 2012 when local Australia-Japan Society member Barry Jarman visited the devastated Tohoku region and returned to the national capital, determined to help.
He approached then AJS president Stuart Forsyth and after some fundraising (including with a fete by the Canberra Grammar School), two children from Tohoku visited the national capital for the first time in 2013 and home-stayed with adults.
The society was keen to get more interaction between the Japanese children and their Australian counterparts, so in 2014 Radford College Japanese teacher Di Fitzpatrick was approached.
Radford families agreed to host the Japanese children who also went to the school for two weeks. Outside of school, they were treated to a host of activities, from visiting the zoo to having tea with the ambassador at the Japan Embassy. Four Japanese children came in 2014.
Fifty Japanese children in total have visited under the program since 2013. It was halted last year due to COVID-19 but it is hoped the program will resume in 2022.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has helped with funding and assistance has also come from long-time supporters such as Questacon.
Ms Fitzpatrick, also the Australia-Japan Society ACT president since 2015, said there was little doubt the children were traumatised, having lost one or both parents or a grandparent.
"They'd come out all scared and nervous and go back happy and laughing and crying after two weeks because they had to go home," she said.
Ms Fitzpatrick has had a strong association with Japan since being a Rotary exchange student there when she was 17 and then making annual visits to the country.
She could not comprehend the magnitude wrought by the tsunami and even a decade later is moved by the plight of the Japanese.
"I remember going home that afternoon and just being transfixed by the television and being so devastated, thinking, 'How could anyone come through that?'," she said, her voice breaking.
She had returned to Japan to catch up with the children who had visited Canberra. They were finding their way, some now adults and many going to caring professions such as teaching and nursing.
"They've really thought a bit more about their purpose in life after what's happened," she said.
"Some of the kids went back to school when they returned home after refusing to go beforehand. Some who were doing really badly at school ended up at university.
"Two weeks seems like such a short period of time, but the impact was just incredible."
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