TOR013: Second Harvest Japan with Charles McJilton

Charles McJilton is the CEO and founder of Second Harvest Japan, and came to Japan for the first time in 1984 with the U.S. military. He returned in 1991 to conduct research at Sophia University as part of his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota. 

During that time he lived in San'ya, a low-income area that many Japanese would not recognize as a part of Tokyo, or Japan, and in an effort to better understand the challenges facing the area’s residents, many of whom live below the poverty line, McJilton lived in a “cardboard” shelter alongside the Sumida River from January 1997 to April 1998. 

In 2000, he became co-chair of a coalition of groups working together to share resources among food distribution programs, and two years later, he incorporated Second Harvest, the first food bank in Japan. Second Harvest Japan collects food that would otherwise go to waste from food manufacturers, farmers, and individuals, and distributes it to people in need such as children in orphanages, low-income households, and the homeless.