Kirk here with a little commemoration of the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes. One obvious role for this page during the disaster was to provide information for English-speaking people who were here in Kumamoto. Another, rather unexpected, role we wound up playing was providing information to people who were not here but wanted to know what was going on. In that regard we got lots of inquiries from foreign media. Among them was the BBC. William was kind enough to try to relay the inquiry from them to me but I’m glad that he was able to take the interview when I failed to respond quickly enough.
I wound up being interviewed by the NBC in the US and by media in New Zealand and France. Later that fall, NHK WORLD-JAPAN had me on a program about the quakes. Another media highlight for the page was the presentation of an award to Sara Kubota by US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy in recognition for the work she did on Kumamoto International after the shaking started.
The page also got written about in a number of Japanese articles.
So, all in all, Kumamoto International got a little more that it’s alotted 15 minutes of fame in 2016. I hope it’s the last time we get attention for playing some sort of a role in a disaster. ;)