On 16 July, I visited Yumoto High School in Fukushima.

Yumoto High School Football Club had a practice match against SAMURAI BLUE (Japan National Team) on May 2006 at the J-Village. Last year (2013) when I visited to see Tohoku Training Centre, I saw a teacher Mr. Kobayashi Yukihiro in charge of its football club as a coach and said to him “I would like to visit your high school.”

I was finally able to live up to the promise and heard from Mr. Kobayashi about their three-year activities during the period from the Earthquake to present.

Buildings of the high school completely collapsed by the earthquake occurred on 11 Match, 2011. Until temporary school buildings were built on its ground in summer that year, its teachers and students were borrowing rooms from the neighbour college for their lessons. They were also borrowing college’s facilities for club activities.
Once the new school building was completed this April, the temporary buildings were removed. Then, they finally could have practices on their own ground. Mr. Kobayashi’s face, who said “It’s been a long time up until now”, reminded me deep impacts of the devastating aftermath of the disaster. The following is the story from Mr. Kobayashi.

“That was devastating. As school buildings were totally destroyed by the Great East Japan Earthquake, the gymnasium turned to an evacuation centre, and the ground turned to a parking lot. Because roads in the school also collapsed, faculty members repaired them by sandbagging to let cars get through. And then, the nuclear accident added another misfortune to that situation.
Fortunately, all students were safe, but members of our football club spread out to different places in and out of this prefecture for an evacuation. When all members could get together again, it was two months after the disaster, which was just after Golden Week. But some of members were forced to change their school or quit the club. Carrying out our activities was extremely difficult. 

Until July, we were able to have lessons and practices, borrowing facilities of Iwaki Meisei University in our city. From the following month, lessons started at a prefabricated temporary school building built on the school ground. But the temporary building was built just at the place where our football club were practicing. That forced us to practice at a baseball field: the baseball club used the infield and the football club used the outfield. As many as 40 players practiced in the space whose size was just about two futsal pitches. That was really hard. Such a situation continued for about three years. But our students never complained and took on their practices as well as organising the ground. I feel we adults conversely learned a lot of things from students.

In the meanwhile, we received plenty of supports. The JFA provided us with lots of relief supplies. Teams and regional organisations outside of Fukushima invited us to festivals and training camps as well as provided practice sites to us. They supported Yumoto High School Football Club in various ways. The fact that we were able to continue to play football every day in such an inconvenient environment was obviously because of such support provided by the football family. I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for that. Thank you very much.

This April, we finally got back to the main school building after the three-year reconstruction of the building. In July, the temporary school building on the ground was torn down in a moment. After the construction of the ground completed, our daily life of football finally came back.
Because some of the members are still unable to come back to their home, we cannot say everything has returned. I’m afraid everything may not completely return to the way it used to be.
But as appreciating for being able to live even in the inconvenience, to learn what we want and to play beloved football, I will put an effort on each and every day with my students, trying my best for what I can do now.”