Japanese Return Money Lost in the Tsunami

Davis MacMillan
Minyanville
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:45 UTC

It looks like altruism isn't dead. At least not in Japan.

Last night, the Daily Mail ran a story reporting that since the earthquake and tsunami last March Japanese citizens have turned in nearly $78 million (2.3 billion yen) in found money. So far, thousands of wallets and purses have been turned in, along with over 5,700 safes that reportedly washed up onshore.

According to Japan's National Police Agency, most of the money found in hard hit areas has been returned to its original owners. Most people kept forms of identification in their safes, which made it easy to find the owners -- once the safes were open anyway.

At one point, so many safes had been turned into police that they had difficulty finding places to store them. The Ofunato Police Station had to hire experts to help them break into the recovered safes.

The article quotes Koetsu Saiki of the Miyagi Prefecture Police on the effort required to open and return nearly 6,000 safes. "In most cases, the keyholes of these safes were filled with mud....We had to start by cutting apart metal doors with grinders and other tools."

The Mail goes on to say that it is not unusual for Japanese to keep large amounts of money in their homes, as many local businesses prefer to handle transactions in cash. Even five months after the disaster, safes continue to trickle into many Japanese police stations.

Of course, some money lost in the tsunami and earthquake has probably been stolen, but, by and large, the Japanese people have shown an amazing amount of honesty in the wake of this disaster.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the English prison population has reached a record high following last week's riots. It remains to be seen whether rioters will return any of the money they found.

Also see: Peoples' Life Savings Washing Ashore in Japan

Reader Comments

HowToBe · 2011-08-19T01:32:49Z

I wonder...

What happens when they find an illegal item in a safe along with the money? Like an unregistered gun or something? Just curious.

griffin · 2011-08-20T19:42:09Z

Well, I imagine it would depend upon whose safe it was, whether they are still alive, and if not, who their next of kin might be.

If the owner died in the tsunami, the Japanese police might just quietly confiscate an unregistered firearm or other contraband, like say, drugs, and simply turn the found money over to the next of kin.

On the other hand, if the owner is still living, they might seize the gun or other contraband, return the money, and let the owner be happy not to be prosecuted. Unless the police want to nail the safe owner.

However, if the owner is (or was) Yakuza - Japanese mafia (the term means 'loser' after the losing hand 8-9-3 in a form of blackjack that's played in Japan), the Japanese police might actually return the gun along with the money, but quietly of course.

The Japanese authorities tolerate the Yakuza because they impose some order in the underworld of gambling, vice and shady dealings.

Authorities in the US also tolerate Asian gangs to some extent, just as they do the Italian mafia and homegrown hoodlums, but only as long as they refrain from open violence on the streets and preying upon citizens with kidnappings, home invasion robberies and so on.

I don't know if it's still the case, but the cops in LA, San Francisco and other cities on the US west coast wouldn't enter the Japanese, Chinese and Korean districts except with overwhelming forces. It was easier and safer to let those populations police themselves and that worked out (and might still be working out) fairly well. Muggings and robberies in those neighborhoods were very rare, for the simple reason that a mugger or robber working in those districts might just disappear, or end up in the hospital badly injured, with no witnesses.