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It was with great shock and sorrow that we learned of the death of GHI's Board Chairman, Satoru Ohya, on November 13, 2006, due to a traffic accident in Tokyo. I knew Mr. Ohya for more than 20 years, even before GHI was established. In fact, it was because of the friendship and trust that we developed, along with the founding President of OYO Corporation, the late Dr. Kunio Suyama, that we discovered a shared desire to help developing countries cope with natural disasters. After long discussions of the possibility of helping people in these countries by creating a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the consequences of the natural disasters they face, Mr. Ohya and Dr. Suyama said to me "we'll provide the funding to help you get started, if you will do the work." Over the years, they provided much more funding and advice than we originally envisioned. The critical elements of our partnership were trust and shared values. I thought of this when many people wrote to me recently about Mr. Ohya's death and expressed their condolences. I realized they were aware of the generosity that Mr. Ohya had extended to me and GHI, in terms of both the time he spent and the funding he either contributed himself or helped raise. But many people probably don't know Mr. Ohya's most important contribution to GHI: his ethics. No organization — for profit or non profit, governmental or non-governmental, domestic or international - has much of a future unless it is ethical, but certainly a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization with GHI's mission cannot survive without being transparent in its motivation. It is natural to suspect the motivation of an organization that says "we want to help you," especially a US-based organization working in developing countries. Mr. Ohya transmitted his ethics by example. Over the two decades I knew him, we worked together under many different circumstances around the world: in our respective offices, in our homes, in big hotels and small restaurants, at international trade conferences, and on earthquake faults in Mongolia and California. He was always the same sincere, inquisitive, direct, generous, and honest man. Through his efforts over the 15 years of GHI's existence, Mr. Ohya helped establish a financial base for GHI by his personal donations and by attracting generous gifts from others, and he established an ethical base for GHI by his personal behavior and advice. We will now continue on our own, building on the foundations he helped create and toward the vision he helped define. All of this is critical for GHI as an institution, but for my GHI associates and me, Mr. Ohya's death also means the loss of a close friend.
