Naho Kimura was born and raised in Japan, but she spent a year in the US as an exchange student during high school. Ever since she attended The Refugee Film Festival hosted by UNHCR at the age of 8, she has been greatly interested in global refugee issues. Seeking to learn how international humanitarian sectors contribute to protecting the lives of refugees, she worked as a PR intern at the ICRC Japan for 6 months. Reporting the reality of victims of armed conflict through the internship stimulated her interest in delivering the voices of refugees to a larger audience, which is why she decided to take part in this project. After working on this project with James, she found how complicated the story of each and every refugee is, realizing that widespread statistical information on refugees is far from capturing the reality of the pain, suffering, and challenges faced by many of them. She feels very honored to have an opportunity to get to know James and work with him to make his story heard by the public. Her hope is that Japanese people will come to understand the role each of them can take in tackling the refugee issues in this country by listening to the stories of refugees here.
Mone Ishikawa was born and raised for eighteen years in Nairobi, Kenya, the heart of Africa. Being raised in an African environment, she was immediately drawn to be in contact with people from her motherland upon traveling to Japan. One of her first encounters was surprisingly enough at the SRSG refugee cafes. She remembers how shocked she was to find out that the vast majority of asylum seekers were of African descent. Upon hearing the pain and suffering of the asylum seekers, she felt a deep connection and responsibility towards the refugee issue. This is why she is now a part of SRSG and is taking part in the Refugee Voices Japan project. She feels immensely honored to be able to represent James’ story and hopes that what she has written is able to accurately portray the strong and persevering man James is, as are all refugees. Through the project, Mone feels that she was able to learn the depth and many faces of issues that refugees face in their eventful lives. Something she could never have felt deep empathy for without listening closely to James’ words. This is why she urges readers to step into the shoes of each individual and observe the issue beyond the statistical data. She hopes that the readers too will be able to feel the need for action as she did.
Mone Ishikawa
3rd year, Anthropology-Sociology Major, Faculty of Liberal Arts
‘Identity and Religion’, ‘What It Means to Be a Refugee‘
Momona Takasaki was born and raised in Japan. As she went to local Japanese schools until she got into Sophia University, she had never seen Japan from an outside perspective. After she started studying civil society and international cooperation, she realized that Japan had so many social issues, before that, she did not know that refugees were coming to Japan and having a lot of difficulties surviving. Joining SRSG made her interested in refugee issues so she decided to join this project. By joining this project, not only she could learn about refugee issues, but by interviewing James, she could also see Japan and refugee issues from his eyes and she could see how refugees in Japan were only seen as statistics numbers, but their voices were not heard in the society. It was challenging for her to make very complicated refugee stories into ones that are easy to understand for the audience, but she feels honored to be able to join this project and learn a lot. She hopes that a lot of people become interested in refugee issues by reading articles here, and not only those narrators’ voices but also a lot of other refugees’ voices will be heard in society because it is very important to first know their stories and their voices to take actions for them and becoming their ally.
