Renovated migration center opens in Kobe

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KOBE, June 3 Kyodo -
A migration center in Kobe opened Wednesday after a renovation of a building
used by Japanese emigrants in the 20th century, marking the centennial of the
first ship carrying Japanese emigrants departed the western Japan port city for
Brazil.
The Kobe Center for Overseas Migration and Cultural Interaction is now aimed at
helping foreign residents in Japan, including Brazilian immigrants of Japanese
descent, while putting on display reconstructed rooms of the time and farm
equipment used by Japanese migrants.
Launched in 1928, the former Kobe Emigration Center operated until 1971 as the
only remaining migration-related facility in Japan, and gave language lessons
to emigrants.
Since the Kasato Maru carried the first group of 781 Japanese emigrants to
Brazil in 1908, some 250,000 people have migrated overseas, mainly to South
America on ships that ran until 1973.
The building survived both the bombings during World War II and the 1995 Great
Hanshin Earthquake that devastated Kobe, city officials said.
==Kyodo
2009-06-03 23:46:09