Our guest today is Takahara Miki, a nurse involved in international relief work.

Over the past 25 years, Takahara has been a part of 17 operations in conflict and disaster zones.

After the Turkey-Syria earthquakes of February 2023,

she served as a health coordinator, responsible for sending supplies and staff to the places they were needed most.

In 2023, in recognition of her outstanding career,

the International Committee of the Red Cross awarded Takahara the Florence Nightingale Medal.

In war and disaster, how do we preserve human dignity, and human life itself?

Takahara discusses the future of international aid.

April 2024, at the Japanese Red Cross Society's National Headquarters.

Hello, everyone.

Takahara Miki is a nurse at the Japanese Red Cross Himeji Hospital.

When disaster strikes, she may be dispatched to aid in relief efforts.

In fact, she's just returned from Syria.

This is her report.

Many structures weren't very strong to start with.

And many had been damaged in the war.

So the strong tremors caused considerable damage.

For years now, Syria has suffered from civil war and economic sanctions.

The Turkey-Syria earthquakes of February 2023 were an additional blow.

Near the Turkey-Syria border, a 7.8-magnitude quake and its powerful aftershocks damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings,

exacerbating Syria's already dire situation.

Takahara arrived in May 2023 as a health coordinator

for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

A health coordinator's job involves working with local aid groups to manage the money,

supplies, and staff coming in from around the world.

I figure out if we're really helping the "most" vulnerable people.

My job is to look at the big picture.

If we need more of something, I take care of it.

I'm entrusted with that power.

I suppose that's the biggest part of my job.

In order to get help to the most vulnerable, gathering good information is key.

From physical damage to progress on relief efforts,

the situation on the ground is hard to gauge through data alone.

Takahara says it is vital to hear directly from the people who need her help.

One thing I think is so important is small talk.

You hear about all sorts of things you don't see on official reports.

I want to ask questions directly to the people in the most trouble, and gauge their reactions.

Maybe I'll look at a line of people waiting to see the doctor,

and I can tell there's something off about one of them.

Afterwards, I'll ask to talk to them.

I make sure to find a private place for us.

And then I ask what's troubling them.

We build a relationship that way.

I tell them, we'll be here the same day next week.

Drop by anytime.

And after several visits, they'll really talk to me.

You have to be on the front lines.

In addition to the physical damage wrought by a disaster,

sexual abuse or gendered violence may flare up in its wake.

A key part of relief work is creating the proper protocols in response.

Even if you don't see these things in the numbers, they're hugely important.

I'll go ahead and write a narrative report.

I may not use the person's name, but I'll put their case in my report.

My work as a coordinator allows me to connect with all sorts of different people.

So I can say, oh, I know someone who does that sort of work.

So how about I refer that person to help your person who's having trouble?

I make these positive connections.

Takahara was born in 1965 in Hyogo Prefecture.

She always wanted to help people, and after high school, she enrolled at a local nursing school, and eventually became a nurse.

But after three years of full devotion to her profession, Takahara questioned the path she was on.

All I knew was nursing.

I was living in a dormitory, and my whole life was the dorm and the hospital.

I thought, I don't know anything!

I wanted to see the world.

Takahara took a bold step, quitting her nursing job and going to Canada.

She got a job as a tour guide and coordinator...

a job that had nothing to do with medicine.

It was a small company.

Things were flexible.

I wanted to show the clients the best possible time, so I might tell the driver,

hey, I bet these people will like if we go off our usual route and go here.

It was always like that, and it was a lot of fun!

Takahara spent about four fun years in Canada this way.

But then, an older driver she worked with at the tour company said something that shifted her perspective.

He was very serious: "You know you're a nurse, right? Don't you know that?"

I thought, "Woah!"

His son was a doctor, and so he knew plenty of nurses.

He knew what he was talking about.

And he said, you're the only guide I know who really cares about the clients' needs in this way during their tours.

That's precisely because you are a nurse!

And when he said that, I thought, I guess so.

Being away made me realize the value of being a nurse.

If I wanted to do the most good, then I should return to Japan -

I would be a nurse again, but version 2.0!

It was time for me to go home.

After restarting work as a nurse, Takahara got involved in international relief efforts,

using the skills she had built up abroad.

Her first assignment: Kenya, 1999, helping care for people wounded in the civil war in Sudan.

She says one moment in particular truly broadened her mindset.

It was a conversation with a boy who had been brought in with a gunshot wound.

I was giving him this pompous lecture:

"When you go home, throw away your guns, this kind of fighting is pointless!"

When I finished, he just stared at me and said,

"If I didn't have a gun, how could I protect myself and my family?"

I was speechless.

In my nursing work, I believed it was important to understand your patient,

value them for who they were, and support them.

But I realized in that moment that I actually didn't understand these people at all.

He had no choice but to carry a gun.

That's the reality he lived in, and that's where he's going back to.

"Carrying a gun is bad"?

Who am I to be telling him that?

How ignorant of me.

I felt ashamed, frustrated and sad.

I was from Japan, another planet.

I didn't know this place.

I needed to have a good awareness of that before I really tried to get involved.

I often think about that moment, to remind myself:

don't be the self-proclaimed savior sticking your nose in things.

Over the years, Takahara has worked on 17 international relief operations in 11 countries, from Sierra Leone to Bangladesh.

Her work is widely regarded as exceptional, and in May 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland,

the International Committee of the Red Cross awarded her the Florence Nightingale Medal, one of the highest honors in nursing.

One of Takahara's accomplishments was the "body restorations" she performed in 2002 on victims of the war in Afghanistan.

These body restorations involve restoring a severely damaged body to its original condition.

After careful consultation with the bereaved families,

any missing or damaged parts of the body are formed out of newspaper and cotton, and then wrapped up in sheets.

This method was used by Japanese Red Cross relief workers in 1985, when a plane crash in Japan claimed 520 lives.

Takahara remembered this event years later in Afghanistan,

where she saw people gruesomely killed by landmines.

With the backing of the local community, she carried out these "body restorations."

I mean, it's hard enough when you lose a family member -

you simply can't return a body that's been absolutely mangled to these families.

You want to respect the dignity of those who have passed,

and you want the grieving process to go as smoothly as possible for the family.

This way, you won't have a traumatic memory of being handed just a piece of meat.

These people died as people.

It helps you to feel that.

It was the only idea I had, really.

The bereaved families expressed their gratitude to Takahara and her colleagues,

who had crossed cultures and countries to care for others.

Takahara is a true veteran in her field, and she says there's something she always keeps in mind during her work.

I think about how the local communities will be able to carry on alone without our help.

Our time there is limited.

I would say the most important thing is to empower local communities to think for themselves.

When she's back in Japan, Takahara is frequently asked to give talks at schools around the country.

As she thinks about the future of international aid,

Takahara hopes that her stories will connect children to the people in the places she has worked.

She tells one story about a girl and her grandfather in Afghanistan.

The girl had lost her foot.

The grandpa was desperate.

He said the girl won't be able to marry in this state.

But he heard foreigners had come, and that we would be able to bring her foot back,

so they had traveled for days by donkey.

We - this team of us from the International Red Cross - really weren't quite sure what to do.

After long discussions, Takahara and her colleagues decided that they should not do reconstructive surgery on the girl.

She had special sponge shoes that her grandfather had made for her,

and they allowed her to go on with her daily life.

Also, the post-surgery recovery period would be tough on the family.

For these reasons, they decided to use the money that would have been spent on the surgery towards providing aid elsewhere.

If the girl did have trouble later in life, they made sure she would be able to get a prosthesis.

Takahara tries to tell this story to the children objectively, without inserting her own emotions.

I want the kids to reflect on what they've noticed.

If they're not sure, that's fine, but how would they act in this situation?

In this way, I give people the chance to meet the people I've met.

"Do you have any words to live by?"

Getting Lost will Help You Find Yourself.

I've often been confused or ignorant in my own life,

but ultimately it led me to all sorts of important realizations.

Whether we're talking about me, or about anyone else,

this is a reminder that when you feel lost, don't be scared - keep going.

These are words of encouragement and they mean a lot to me.