Mika Yamamoto
| Mika Yamamoto | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Native name | 山本 美香 |
| Born |
Mika Yamamoto 26 May 1967 Tsuru, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | 20 August 2012 (aged 45) Aleppo, Syria |
| Cause of death | Shot by Pro-government assailant Killed by government shelling (rebel claim) |
| Resting place | Tsuru |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Alma mater | Tsuru University |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1990–2012 |
| Parent(s) | Koji Yamamoto (father) |
Mika Yamamoto (山本 美香 Yamamoto Mika?) (26 May 1967 – 20 August 2012) was an award-winning Japanese video and photo journalist for the news agency Japan Press. Yamamoto was killed on 20 August 2012 while covering the ongoing Syrian Civil War in Aleppo, Syria. She was the first Japanese and fourth foreign journalist killed in the Syrian Civil War that began in March 2011. She was also the fifteenth journalist killed in Syria in 2012. Yamamoto was a recipient of the Vaughn-Uyeda Memorial Prize of the Japanese Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association for her reporting of international affairs in 2004.
Yamamoto was born in Tsuru, a city in Yamanashi Prefecture, on 26 May 1967. She had two sisters, and her father, Koji Yamamoto, is a former Asahi Shimbun reporter. She graduated from Tsuru University.
Yamamoto began her career in 1990 as a reporter for Asahi Newstar, the satellite television channel of TV Asahi, eventually becoming a video journalist and director for documentaries and news programs. She left the channel in 1995 to join the Japan Press, a Tokyo-based independent media group, which covers news and produces documentaries for TV broadcasting and magazines focused on the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Known for employing hand-held video cameras and performing her own editing, Yamamoto served as a correspondent for the Japan Press in critical areas such as Kosovo, Bosna, Chechnya, Indonesia, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Uganda. She reported on the suppression of the Afghan women in Kabul and interviewed Taliban members in Afghanistan. She worked as a special correspondent for Nippon TV in Iraq. She survived a coalition airstrike on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 3 April 2003 where two journalists from Reuters and a Spanish broadcaster were killed. Yamamoto transitioned to work as a news presenter for the Nippon TV news program Today by NNN (「NNNきょうの出来事」 NNN Kyo no Dekigoto?) in 2003 and 2004, receiving the Vaughn-Uyeda Memorial Award Prize for her previous coverage of the war in Iraq. She was also a special lecturer at Waseda University's journalism school and at her alma mater, Tsuru University. Her lectures were concerned with the effects of war on ordinary citizens and the role of journalism during wartime. After the Great East Japan earthquake on 11 March 2011, Yamamoto visited the affected areas to record the damage experienced. In November 2011, she began to serve as an independent consultant to the Government Revitalization Unit with the responsibility for reducing unnecessary spending in the Japanese government. Yamamoto was on assignment in Syria for Nippon TV to cover the ongoing civil war and the impact it had on the Syrian civilian population when she was killed.
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