If a stray photo has an owner, Kaori Nose will try to reunite them.
Nose has been helping people recover lost photos since losing her parents' home to the March 2011 monster tsunami that hit the Tohoku region. The massive waves washed away parts of her seaside hometown of Sendai before her very eyes. Now Nose, 35, is the director of the nonprofit organization Omoide Kaeru (roughly translated as "Returning Memories"), based in Kanie, Aichi Prefecture.
She set up the volunteer group with some friends after learning about photo rescue activities on the Internet in January 2012, 10 months after the disaster, and subsequently getting involved in photo recovery work.