Update on Donations to the Tonga Emergency Relief Fund
On January 15, 2022, the underwater Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano in the South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga erupted, blasting steam, ash, and sulfur dioxide to record heights.
The tsunami generated by the eruption destroyed over 600 structures, including at least 300 residential houses, displacing 1,525 persons and causing four deaths; the entire population of more than 100,000 people impacted, according to the Tongan government.
Within days, The Nippon Foundation established the Tonga Emergency Relief Fund to collect funds from the general public to support the island nation’s recovery.
By the time the fund stopped accepting donations on July 31, it had received 197,271,800 yen (about $1,356,000) from 25,409 donors. The total includes 100 million yen (about $687,000) the foundation contributed and 10 million yen (about $67,800) Ms. Kanae Minato, a popular Japanese writer of crime fiction and thrillers, donated to launch the fund. She worked as a volunteer in Tonga under the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers program for about two years from late 1996.
As of this moment, the foundation has yet to deliver the donations to the Kingdom of Tonga. Let me explain why.
When it comes to our humanitarian and other assistance to foreign countries, we make it a policy to provide aid at the earliest possible date, but only after confirming people’s actual needs and while avoiding giving cash directly to governments.
From February to April, the foundation started contacting the Tongan embassy in Tokyo. But the embassy did not have dependable communications routes with the home government in the aftermath of the eruption and tsunami and the country’s borders were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortunately, on June 29, I met with Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
I told him that my late father, Ryoichi Sasakawa, served as Tonga’s honorary consul in Tokyo and showed him photos taken when the foundation invited the late King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV to visit Japan in the 1980s. He promised to see what he could about ensuring that the donations reach those in need in the kingdom.
To follow up, we then start reaching out to the Prime Minister’s Office in Tonga, but were told that they could do nothing in the absence of Mr. Sovaleni, who was on a two-month overseas trip.
Late in October, after receiving word that the prime minister would be back in Tonga, the foundation sent staff members there to hold consultations with the government and other stakeholders to confirm the needs of people hit by the eruption and tsunami.
To improve understanding of the nature and impact of the devastating volcanic eruption, The Nippon Foundation teamed up in April with New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to survey the undersea impact of the explosion, using their collective knowledge, experience and resources to build a detailed and invaluable picture of the eruption’s aftermath below the ocean’s surface.
The Nippon Foundation-NIWA Tonga Eruption Seabed Mapping Project (TESMaP) was also supported by The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to map the entirety of the world’s ocean floor by 2030.
TESMaP’s phase one, which took place between April and May, saw NIWA scientists on board the research vessel RV Tangaroa survey the ocean around the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano, covering thousands of square kilometers and collecting video images of the eruption’s impact by deploying a multitude of instruments.
Then phase two used the 12-meter-long USV (uncrewed surface vessel) Maxlimer developed by SEA-KIT International of Essex, England, to spend an additional month between July and August directly on top of Hunga-Tonga's submerged opening, or caldera, in coordination with Seabed 2030, for mapping its current shape. I believe this research, covering an area which could not be surveyed by NIWA due to safety reasons, will prove crucial to the overall findings of the project.
Analysis of this research will help researchers and governments understand and mitigate the risk of future eruptions, which will be of particular benefit to countries like Japan and New Zealand that are vulnerable to such natural disasters.
I sincerely hope that donors to the Tonga Emergency Relief Fund and others will understand why it takes so long to make use of the donations. We will let you know as soon as we decide when and how this is to happen.