MASAYO KIDANI
Masayo Kidani, Red Cross volunteer & founder of Momiji, Windsor, 70

Masayo was born in Tokyo to a well-off family, and in the last year of the Second World War her father, who was a member of the Japanese parliament, was killed in a plane crash shot down by Allied Forces. She also lost her cousin in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped. The government confiscated her family's wealth after the war to pay compensation to the British and Masayo & her sister were sent to a Catholic school in Tokyo.

Masayo has been volunteering for 43 years and she joined the Red Cross in 1964 when the Crown Princess Michiko asked her to join the volunteers for the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Masayo attended University where she majored in literature and immediately took a job as a flight attendant for Japan Air Lines where she met her husband. They moved to Paris and then onto to the Vietnam Japan Air Lines Saigon office. At this time the TETO offensive of the Vietnam War was happening and for a year Masayo was called upon by the Red Cross to help look after wounded civilians and soldiers. They were eventually evacuated to Bangkok.

Masayo has worked for the Red Cross around the world and her services have been invaluable ranging from visiting prisoners, to being the only woman in a convoy delivering Red Cross aid to villages in Poland. Today Masayo is still working with the Red Cross in the UK and set up the Momiji charity, which takes sick young people on an exchange to Japan. The purpose is for the young person to experience a different culture and to make friends. With this work Masayo works closely with Helen & Douglas House a charity providing respite and end of life care to children and young people.

Masayo has also been a staunch supporter of Abbeyfield International - the provider of housing and care for the elderly. Masayo established the first Abbeyfield House in Japan in 2006.

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