For 8-year-old Risa Yoshida from the city of Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, writing chatty letters to her parents and friends had always been a joy. But writing to her father, Hirofumi, became much more important after March 11 last year, when a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit their hometown.
She would write words of encouragement to her 48-year-old father in an effort to boost his spirits after he lost his job as a judicial scrivener when their home and his office were washed away by the tsunami that smashed into parts of the Tohoku region.
Then, when she moved with her parents and younger sister into a shelter set up in the city and saw other people striving to get on with their lives amid shortages of food and other daily necessities, Risa felt the same urge to offer words of reassurance and comfort.