Takashi Yamamoto, 42, president of Peace Boat Disaster Relief Volunteer Center, is Japan's leading expert on volunteer disaster-relief activities. In 1995, when he was a staffer of the educational cruise ship Peace Boat, Yamamoto began working on disaster relief for Kobe after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of Jan. 17 that year. He went on to help provide relief in disaster-hit areas overseas, including in Sri Lanka and China.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, Yamamoto has led around 10,000 volunteers in Ishinomaki and Onagawa, both in Miyagi Prefecture, providing hot meals to evacuees and helping clear debris from victims' homes.

We need to provide immediate help to those affected by earthquakes. That was what I and Tatsuya Yoshioka, director of Peace Boat, thought (in 1995). That's why we rushed to Kobe right after Great Hanshin Earthquake.