How can Google help the Japanese Tsunami victims?The Tsunami has wiped out not only people’s houses, but also photos and movies in albums, tapes, and PCs.Thus the memories of the victims have been lost.People cannot move on to the future when they lose their past.

Our challenge was to recover the memories of the victims. And we created a project to bring back photos and videos that they had lost using Picasa, YouTube and Street view.People from all over Japan answered to the voices of the victims. This was a story of a PR campaign with real action proving that, with Google, the power of cyber can change the real world.

First we created a website where the victims can submit a memory they want to recover. We set post boxes at 45 refugees areas within the disaster site, so one can submit their memory in hand writing. We then uploaded that on to the website.Moreover, we spread the requests all over Japan through newspaper ads, banner ads, and TVC’s. We made a system where people from all over Japan can react to the victim’s request by uploaded photos and movies onto YouTube and Picasa.Moreover, we also created a system with street view where people can compare the city before and after the disaster.

People all over Japan answered to the voices of the victims. The website went over 5,000,000 PV’s. More than 20,000 photos and movies where gathered.

This project resulted in digital Google's first ever challenge in an analogue way.This project will keep on going until the victims recover their past memories, and gain hope for their future.