A volunteer organization based in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, has released video clips teaching people how to clean photos dirtied with mud amid natural disasters.
Rescue-photo.net has helped survivors of disasters across the nation to clean photos tainted with dirt or muddy water. The organization's know-how has been utilized, for example, in areas in the Kyushu region that were hit by torrential rains in July.
The organization calls on people in such situations to not give up on their precious photos.
Tokie Kumabe, 67, in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, is one beneficiary of Rescue-photo.net's efforts. Her single-story house was destroyed when the Kuma River overran its banks near her home due to heavy rain.
While she was disposing of unusable furniture, she found several dozen photo albums in the mud. They contained about 10,000 photos that Kumabe had taken over more than 40 years.
The albums included pictures of birthday parties for her two sons and her daughter when they were little, and of her grandchild wearing her hand-made clothes. All the photos were covered in mud.
Not wanting to dispose of these precious items, Kumabe learned of efforts to clean dirty photos through a leaflet from another local volunteer organization that was using Rescue-photo-net's techniques.
She was taught by the local organization how to clean the pictures, and used sponges to wipe the mud off them.
Kumabe said, "I want to clean as many of the photos as possible, even if it's just one more, and share the memories with my children and grandchildren."
The technique on cleaning dirtied photos spread across the nation through volunteers who worked in disaster-hit areas after the Great East Japan Earthquake. It has also been disseminated in areas hit by later natural disasters, such as torrential rains in western Japan in 2018 and Typhoon No. 19 in October last year.
People who have participated in such cleaning activities established Rescue-photo.net late last year.
This time, the organization produced four video clips containing a total of 25 minutes-long motions pictures.
Mari Akiyama, co-representative of the organization, gives demonstrations of how to dry photo albums, cut out photos from damaged albums and methods for removing taints from photo prints.
Akiyama said: "We want to widely spread a standard set of information so that people will not fail at cleaning photos. I want as many people as possible to know that they don't need to throw away their photo memories."
The videos can be viewed on Rescue-photo.net's website.
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