JAPAN WATCH : Returning the Favor

Southern Californians who experienced last year’s Northridge earthquake surely have been touched in an extraordinary way by the images of death and destruction in Kobe. Rightly, many are impelled to reach across the Pacific to help the victims of Japan’s most deadly temblor in seven decades.

In 1994 the Japanese extended a hand in our time of need. Japanese companies donated $3 million to victims and relief efforts after the Northridge quake. That generosity did not go unnoticed then, nor does it now, one year later. (In an unsettling coincidence, the Kobe earthquake occurred on the same date as the Southern California disaster, Jan. 17, and within a little more than an hour of that 4:31 a.m. calamity.)

Helping earthquake victims is an international job. There is a tendency to think that Japan, with the world’s second-largest economy, is not in need of aid. But although the nation was considered a model of earthquake preparedness, the many thousands of deaths, injuries and cases of dislocation are overwhelming the central government’s ability to provide water, food, shelter and medical supplies.

Southern California, as the home of Little Tokyo and the largest populations of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals in the United States, has long had special ties to Japan. The Times periodically is publishing a list of the organizations collecting donations for Kobe. Aside from international relief groups, they include the Japan American Society of Southern California and the California Community Foundations. Please do help.