Japan eyes deadlines for keeping mementos lost in disasters

April 19, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Environment Ministry plans to ask municipalities to set deadlines for storing items of sentimental value, such as photo albums, that are found in areas hit by natural disasters.

With storage space limited, the ministry aims to help municipalities avoid ending up keeping such items indefinitely and encourage possible owners to visit storage facilities and collect them.

The ministry revealed the policy in its revised guidelines for dealing with disaster waste.

In past large-scale natural disasters, including the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, many people lost treasured belongings, when their homes were swept away by tsunami, for instance.

Municipalities in disaster-hit areas have been storing such items for many years in hopes of returning them to their owners, incurring financial burdens in the process.

Japan's lost property law sets three months as the storage period for lost and found items.

In reality, however, some municipalities in disaster areas have been storing such items for much longer periods.

The ministry believes that it cannot uniformly apply the same standards for ordinary lost items and items of sentimental value that went missing in disasters.

Still, the ministry thinks that setting deadlines for storing treasured items could facilitate their return, as possible owners would be prompted to visit storage facilities after learning of deadlines.

While allowing municipalities to set their own storage limits, the guidelines ask them to dispose of items after making sufficient efforts to inform residents of storage deadlines on websites and by news releases.

Deadline extensions are possible, according to the guidelines.

The guidelines also call on municipalities to set rules for identifying the owners of items of sentimental value that they are storing and methods for returning them. The suggestion comes after some people in areas devastated by the March 2011 disaster were unable to show identification, such as a driver's license, chiefly because they were washed away by the tsunami. Jiji Press