Myanmar should not fear offers of foreign aid

A monument called Kutsuzuka Ireihi stands in Nagoya. It is dedicated to the victims of the 1959 Isewan Typhoon and was named Kutsuzuka, which literally means mound of shoes, after a pile of shoes left behind by the victims. I heard that a poem written by a father who lost his only son to the typhoon led to the erection of the monument.

The poem reads: "This place was the cold sea/ Water came up to the chest/ ... It is here where I held his hand in the storm/ And continued to hang on." The father firmly grabbed his son's arm but when a giant wave hit several times, they were separated and the boy disappeared. More than 5,000 lives were lost.

As was the case with the Isewan Typhoon, high waves caused serious damage when a cyclone hit Myanmar (Burma) earlier this month. It is said to have left tens of thousands of people dead or missing. The casualty figure continues to rise. The cyclone apparently wiped out some villages.

How many hands tried to hold on to loved ones amid turbulent waters? My heart aches when I think about the people who exhausted their power and went down.

Those who survived must also be afflicted by remorse and heartbreak. Nature shows no mercy.

At the same time, however, much of the damage was apparently "man-made." I heard that weather information was inadequate. Even after the cyclone hit, the military government was reluctant to accept relief workers.

Freedom and human rights are strictly limited in Myanmar. The arrival of outsiders could expose the country's state of affairs to the rest of the world. From what I heard, the government deep down would rather decline offers of foreign aid.

The rainy season starts in Myanmar around this time of year.

"Drums of the royal palace start playing and the black face starts to cry ... Those who were in hiding also come out." The phrase, describing this time of the year, appears in "Kisetsu no 366-nichi Wadai Jiten" (A dictionary of seasonal topics for 366 days).

The drums are thunder, the black face is that of rain clouds and what comes out are small animals that remained hidden under the ground.

At a time when fruitful showers moisten all things, Myanmar was met with a major disaster. I pray that it overcomes its grief and gets back on its feet as soon as possible.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 8(IHT/Asahi: May 9,2008)