A Small Part of Getting Your Life Back

Photographs are a cherished link connecting people with each other and with precious moments in their life's journey. Many people who survived the tsunami and earthquake in northeast Japan said that, if they could return to their old homes for only a moment, the one thing they would want to retrieve is their photograph albums.

That is assuming, of course, that the photo albums would still be on their shelves, safely indoors.

Unfortunately, a tsunami is not so neat. Many albums were retrieved, but they were soaked in sea water and caked in mud, scoured by salt and sand.

Hopeless? Not always.

Here is what an expert from the Fuji Film company has to say in The Japan Times online:


"On average, a family takes about 200 to 300 photos a year, and over the course of 10 years that comes to about 2,000 to 3,000 photos per family," said Yuichi Itabashi of Fuji Film. "But even a skilled person can only clean 200 photos a day at maximum. Normally, 100 photos a day."

Collaborating with local volunteers, Itabashi spent two days just cleaning photos.

Mud stuck on the surface has to be removed with a soft brush. Each photo is then soaked in water warmed to 20 to 30 degrees for up to 60 seconds, during which further mud is removed with a brush or finger. The warm water helps remove mud and sea salt, according to Fujifilm.

After a rinse with clean water, the photos are dried in a shady, dust-free environment.

Cleaning up photos is one thing, giving them back to their owners is another.

"This is totally different from previous disasters where belongings remained inside homes," said Itabashi. "Photos are valuable only when they are in the hands of the owners. So we thought it was a part of our job to return the photos."

Thus one thing they do is keep album covers as people tend to remember them, he said.

And photos are likely to be returned when local residents participate in the volunteer photo-cleaning activity because they know their neighbors.

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PS: What happens if you don't print your photos and put them in albums, but save them on the computer or memory sticks? Time to think about alternative storage locations?