Correspondent
Languages
AFP / Patrick Baz

Learning to recognize PTSD

Tuesday 5 September 2017

"At first glance AFP journalists Patrick Baz and I have little in common," writes Paris-based journalist Mie Kohiyama. "He is an experienced photographer who has covered all of the major conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa over the past 30 years. I have mostly worked in France, with a stint in Tokyo."

"Yet we share one thing -- we both suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of our work."

Read more
  • AFP / JIJI PRESS / Sadatsugu Tomizawa
  • AFP / Kazuhiro Nogi
  • AFP / Toru Yamanaka

The pull of ancestors

Wednesday 12 April 2017

"Every year around March 11,  the anniversary of the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, I hear the call of my paternal ancestors," writes Mie Kohiyama, a Franco-Japanese AFP journalist who covered the disaster.

"My father comes from a family of samurais whose base was near Fukushima, and every year mid-March I feel the need to honor the some 18,500 people who were killed or went missing in the giant wave that washed onto the northeastern shore of Japan after a magnitude 9 undersea earthquake off the coast."

Read more