SENDAI -- Miyagi Prefecture's Board of Education has formed a partnership with Harvard University to share 220,000 items and documents related to the Great East Japan Earthquake. The agreement was made official on Feb. 27, with the fervent hopes that the cruel lessons from the disaster will not fade away with the passage of time, and that the agreement will contribute to both disaster mitigation and prevention education.
The Miyagi prefectural government will allow users of the Japan Disaster Digital Archives, operated by Harvard University, to search and view the data stored in the Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Miyagi. It especially encourages researchers to make use of them.
The Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Miyagi, a digital database created by the prefecture in cooperation with all 35 of its municipalities, was opened to the public in June 2015. It contains about 220,000 items, including photographs and administrative documents related to the disaster.
Harvard University has also cooperated with other organizations, including the Iwate prefectural government. With the agreement with Miyagi Prefecture, roughly 2.4 million documents will be available to view through the university's archive. The university hopes that researchers from Japan and abroad will utilize the data for purposes such as the formulation of disaster countermeasures.
Prof. Andrew Gordon, a modern Japanese history specialist at Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, signed the agreement with the prefectural government.
Gordon remarked that it is of the utmost importance to be able to transmit photos and videos of the disaster to people all over the world, and that he hopes that the materials will increasingly be used at schools and other educational institutions.
While the deputy director of the Miyagi board of education remarked: "By sending our memories of the disaster to people the world over, we can prevent them from fading away. I want people to make use of the valuable materials." The data is expected to be released by Wednesday.
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