KOBE -- Neither the Japan Red Cross nor a local distribution committee has any accounting of what happened to donations sent by individuals and groups of Americans to help survivors of the Great Hanshin Earthquake.
In addition, the local branch of the relief organization is holding back nearly 700 million yen in donations received from 27 Red Cross and Red Crescent societies overseas in the wake of the quake, and plans to use the money not for direct aid to quake survivors but for future disasters. Red Cross officials in both the U.S. and Japan say that their accounting policies are in keeping with the rules established by the International Red Cross for disaster relief and that a detailed accounting of where the money went is not possible.
The Japan Red Cross revealed what they had done with the more than 1 billion yen received from overseas sister societies in a letter to the American Red Cross international services division, a copy of which was obtained by The Japan Times. Between January 1995 and last October, the American Red Cross sent more than 800 million yen, or 80 percent of the total. But a request for an account of how the money has been used was made only last month after the society received inquiries from The Japan Times as to where the money went.