"After me cometh a man" - A 1995 Heroic Nurse Returned to Her Hometown

Snow around Tokyo

A 1995 Heroic Nurse Returned to Her Hometown

I saw a TV program that featured a nurse who saved and helped many evacuees of the 1995 Hanshin-Kobe Great Earthquake.

She then continued her mission to save and help victims of natural disasters in Japan and abroad.  Ms. Kuroda even ventured into disaster-stricken areas of the 2011 Great Northeast Japan Tsunami as soon as the catastrophic disaster occurred to support various medical and human-care activities.  She was respected especially by old people who evacuated their homes and were forced to live in shelters and temporary houses.

Ms. Kuroda was also a well known expert in the field of emergency medical care in the medical society.

She died in her 70s last year for cancer.

Her last wish was to move to a hospital in her birthplace, Shimane Prefecture, though she was hospitalized in Kobe City of Hyogo Prefecture.

Ms. Kuroda was transferred to Izumo City and a university hospital by airplane while receiving medical care.  In the hospital in her old hometown, she died watching the landscape.

For 20 years from 1995 when the big earthquake occurred in the Hanshin area around Kobe and Osaka of west Japan, where she had been working in hospitals for 40 years, to 2014 when she died in the middle of her humanitarian mission, she was working without even taking one-day holiday.  She was always moving from a disastrous area to another to take care of those who needed medical and mental help.

But what was in her mind was the landscape of a country town where she was born and raised.  She left her parents' home after graduating from a junior high school to enter a nurse school in the Hanshin area.

There are some elements in her life that are also related to me, so that the TV program was so interesting.





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Joh 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Joh 1:30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me.
Joh 1:31 And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.
Joh 1:32 And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.