A project uniting everyone to bring back the memories lost in the disaster. First we created a website where the victims could submit a memory they wanted to recover. We set post boxes at 45 refuges within the disaster area, 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. We made a direct communication system where people from all over Japan can react to the victim’s request by uploaded photos and movies onto YouTube and PICASA.

How can Google help the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami victims?Just after the earthquake, we went to the disaster site and found out that the Tsunami had wiped out not only people's houses, but also photos and movies that were stored in tapes, albums and computer hard disks. Thus the memories of the victims have been lost.Our challenge was to 'Recover the Memories' of the victims.So we created a new direct communication project to help the victims.

People all over Japan answered the voices of the victims. The website went over 5m page-views.More than 20,000 photos and movies were gathered.

This project will keep on going, until the victims recover their past memories, and gain hope for the future.

If they lose their past, it’s difficult to move forward to the future, because memories give us hope for the future, letting us know who we were and how we were supported in the past. We proved that the power of cyber can change the real world.

And setting 45 memory post boxes and collecting handwriting requests without PCs resulted in Google's first-ever challenge in an analogue way. This project is a continuing direct communication platform which will go on until their past memories are recovered and their hopes for the future restored.