The True Lives of Ukraine’s Evacuees in Japan

Fourteen displaced Ukrainian refugees listen to their teacher’s explanations on a table with a textbook and a tablet with sunflowers on it. Among the students, the one who stands out the most is Galina, an 81-year-old woman with dyed red hair.

I can do it,” “I can’t do it.

On February 11, a Japanese language class was being held in a room of a building in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture.

Exactly one year ago, Galina, who lived alone in Kyiv, the capital of her native Ukraine, visited her relatives in Chernihiv Oblast in northern Ukraine about two weeks after the Russian military invasion.

She said, “There was heavy shelling from the Russians there, and it was very difficult and frightening to hide in the cellar and then return to her home again.”

On the advice of his daughter, who lives in Japan, he decided to evacuate. Instead of stopping at his home in Kyiv, he took a bus to Warsaw, the capital of neighboring Poland, and arrived in Japan in mid-March. He began his evacuation in Nagoya City, where his daughter lived.

At first I lived at my daughter’s house, but I almost fell down the stairs twice, so I started living alone.

He now lives in municipal housing in the city. She is good at cooking and washing clothes as she has been doing it for a long time. However, one wonders if an 81-year-old grandmother, suddenly thrown into a society where the language and culture are completely different from her own, does not feel uneasy. Galina says, “I don’t have any problems.

I don’t have any problems,” she says matter-of-factly. My daughter often stops by my house and buys me food such as strawberries and salmon. I also go shopping with her. When I am alone, I take walks in the park or watch movies at home. I also attend Japanese language classes, but it’s hard for me to remember.

I got “lost” once. On the way home from an evening at a restaurant with his daughters, he was dropped off near his home, saying, “It’s all right from here. However, he was unable to find his wing of the municipal housing complex, and while he was in a quandary, he ended up in the care of the police.

I tried to explain, but I couldn’t get through to them, so I asked my daughter-in-law to call them and tell them about me, and I managed to get home. In Japan, people are kind and it’s always fun, like a festival. But I still want to go home when Ukraine is at peace.”

A Guarantor and a Man and a Woman

Since Japan began accepting refugees from Ukraine last March, 2,291 people (as of February 8) have come to Japan. Of these, three out of four are women; of the 300 over the age of 61, Galina is probably in the “oldest class. While most of the guarantors for the elderly are likely to be relatives who will take care of them in Japan, in many cases the guarantors are strangers to the refugees.

Olena, 42, who lives with her husband and three daughters in a prefectural housing complex in Anjo City, Aichi Prefecture, is from the eastern province of Halkiu. She fled to Poland two days before the Russian military invasion of her country began, after sensing unrest in the area. However, because she entered the country before the invasion, she was not eligible for assistance in the country. Her husband, Walery, 45, got a job as an interior decorator, but life was tough. She was considering evacuating to the U.K. when she met a Japanese woman on a social networking service.

She recommended that we evacuate to Japan. But I didn’t understand Japanese, so I didn’t think about it at all. But she explained to me again and again about the support she could provide, including a living environment, and after much hesitation, I decided to go for it.

Olena and her family arrived in Japan in mid-June of last year, and the Japanese woman became their guarantor. When her family’s evacuation life was introduced on local TV, the circle of support grew. Through this relationship, she was able to get a job as a manicurist.

I did a little nail work in Ukraine, too,” she said. Now I work two days a week and talk with customers via poke-talk.

Olena is a hard worker who attends Japanese language classes five days a week. Walleye also got a job as an interior decorator and works three days a week. Her three daughters attend elementary school. Her second daughter is allergic to milk, so she is at a loss to call an ambulance when her health suddenly changes. Even so, Olena is always positive.

With the help of the Japanese people around me, I am financially richer than I was in Ukraine, and it is easier to raise my children,” she says. As long as the war is not over, I will stay in Japan.

According to the Immigration and Immigration Control Agency, of the 2,291 displaced persons who have come to Japan, 107 have so far left the country. Some of them had problems with their guarantors.

Anastasia (pseudonym, in her 30s), who came to Japan in early April of last year, had a Japanese man (in his 50s), whom she had met briefly, as her guarantor. The man is an associate professor at a university and a key figure in a foundation that supports displaced persons in Ukraine. They began living alone together in the man’s house, and eventually became man and wife.

But he hid our relationship from me in public, saying he was a teacher and had to act seriously.

Because the evacuation center was in a rural mountainous area, he needed a car when he went out, and his freedom of movement was restricted. He could not refuse repeated interviews from the media through a man, and he became uncomfortable.

One day, I looked at his phone and found a hickey on a message he had exchanged with another woman. So we started fighting a lot. ……”

Anastasia returned to Ukraine in mid-August. She now lives in Germany, where she is rebuilding her life as a refugee.

When I think about my past in Japan, I feel negative and blame myself for being naive. But now I am living a very free and settled life in Germany.

Evacuee life in Japan depends on the success or failure of the guarantor. A year has passed since the Russian military invasion, and their drama in a foreign country continues.

From the March 3 and 10, 2023 issue of FRIDAY