The Nippon Foundation Hands Over 3 Community Halls, 30 Fishing Boats to Tonga Using Donations to Emergency Relief Fund (1)

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.

It was confirmed as the largest ever underwater explosion, according to the NIWA-Nippon Foundation Tonga Eruption Seabed Mapping Project (TESMaP), a joint initiative of the foundation and New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

The explosion triggered a tsunami that generated waves up to 15 meters high, destroying over 600 structures, including at least 300 residential houses, displacing about 1,500 persons and causing four deaths, according to the Tongan government, which said that the entire population of more than 100,000 people had been impacted.

Four days after the eruption, The Nippon Foundation established the Tonga Emergency Relief Fund to collect funds from the general public to support the island nation’s recovery efforts.

By the end of July 2022, it received 194,204,074 yen (about $1.3 million) from 24,409 donors, including 100 million yen (about $0.68 million) the foundation contributed.

Now I would like to explain why it took about two and a half years for us to deliver the donations to the kingdom.

When it comes to our humanitarian and other assistance to foreign countries, our policy is to provide aid at the earliest possible date, but only after confirming people’s actual needs and avoiding giving cash directly to governments. This is in the interest of transparency and accountability to our donators and the general public.

From January to May 2022, the foundation repeatedly contacted the Tongan embassy in Tokyo, but the embassy did not have dependable lines of communication 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. In particular, the volcanic eruption cut the country's only undersea communications cable, leaving people unable to contact the outside world.

In June of that year, I met with Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. I asked him to draw up a list of items needed by the people of Tonga and to contact the foundation as soon as possible. He promised to see what he could do about ensuring that the donations reach those in need in the kingdom.

(To be continued)