JAPAN: Elderly Couple Donates 100 Million Yen From Savings

TOKYO (Mainichi Daily News), May 27, 2006: An elderly couple has donated 100 million yen to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to go toward the development of Okinotori Islands on the southern tip of Japan. The money was donated by 81-year-old Tokyo resident Itsuo Sakai, a former Fisheries Agency bureaucrat, and his 80-year-old wife Kiwako. Sakai said he had "saved the money away bit by bit" over the years. Japan and China are at odds over the exclusive economic zone around the islands, and the couple said they identified with the metropolitan government's stance to protect them. The metropolitan government plans to use the money to create images of the islands. Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara accepted the money on Friday. "We will put this to meaningful use" he said. Sakai entered the Fisheries Agency in 1948 and resigned in 1978, after serving as director general of the agency's Fishing Port Department. He now serves as honorary chairman of a national fishing port construction association. He has three children and three grandchildren, but decided to give the money away to the metropolitan government, saying, "I'm not leaving an inheritance for my descendants." This fiscal year, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government set aside a budget of 1.3 billion yen for the Okinotori Islands. It plans to build survey vessels and create a floating fish-breeding reef in the surrounding sea. (Mainichi) Copyright 2005-2006 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All rights reserved.