Heartbreaking moments from Japan’s earthquake disaster

Mtoday news / The Mail

# Hungry people forage in the snow for scraps of food and firewood
# 450,000 desperate people squat in makeshift refugee shelters
# 850,000 people struggling to survive without food and water
# 20,000 missing in two towns with another 5,000 confirmed dead


Japan, March 17: Homeless, desperate people clambered over snow-covered debris where their villages had once stood, gathering armloads of firewood as Japan’s humanitarian crisis escalated yesterday.

 

Heartbreak with no end: A man cries next to his destroyed house where his dead mother is still buried in the rubble in Onagawa...Terrible sorrow: Yoshie Murakami holds the hand of her dead mother in the rubble of her home in Rikuzentakata. Her daughter is still missing

In scenes more befitting a poverty-stricken Third World country than the world’s third-richest nation, hungry people wrapped themselves in odd scraps of clothing in a futile attempt to keep out the cold in temperatures only just above freezing.

One of the most heartbreaking images to emerge was of a woman breaking down as found her dead mother’s hand among the rubble of her destroyed home.

Yoshie Murakami cried in anguish as she said her final goodbyes and held her mother’s hand. The body was discovered after five days of agonising searching in in the tsunami-hit city of Rikuzentakata.

Terribly, her 23-year-old daughter is still missing. All Mrs Murakami can do is pray for a miracle.

Similar scenes unfolded throughout the country as rescuers sifted though the rubble and families prayed that their loved ones were safe and well.

Some residents made homeless by the tragedy foraged for food, crying out with delight when they found an undamaged can of food here, a still-edible packet of noodles there.

They carried their pickings back to refugee centres, set up in buildings which survived the dual assault of earthquake and tsunami on the north east coast of Honshu island, where women had joined together to add the findings to pots of boiled rice.

’It’s very sad to realise that the wood we’ve been picking up is the remains of our houses,’ said one man as he stumbled through the debris of homes which had once stood around the picture-postcard harbour in the port of Rikuzentakata.

’But we need fuel for the heaters and there is none – so we must make fires from this wood. A lot of it is dry enough to burn, so we can cook and perhaps keep a little bit warm.’

Last night flames illuminated the falling snowflakes along a 150-mile stretch of coastline, where bonfires had been lit outside the doorways of evacuation centres, with scores of people taking in turns to warm themselves.

But then they had to return inside and huddle under blankets because there weren’t enough fuel heaters, or kerosene to run them.

Some need medicine, more clothing, food, fuel – but most of all they want the nightmare to go away. ’We know it will be a long, long time before we will ever be able to return to a normal kind of life,’ said Satoru Fukasu, sitting with his wife in a shelter north of Sendai, the largest city on the east coast.

 

Horrifying: An aerial shot shows the devastated centre of Wakuya. A boat sits on top of a building at the centre of the picture

 

Kenji Sugawara (left), with a photo of his missing wife, searches for her through the remains of the devastated city of Otsuchi: the devastation is too much for one man after he collected his belongings in Otsuchi

 

Deserted: An aerial view of winter snows covering tsunami devastated Minamisanriku town, Miyagi prefecture





Japanese military personnel carry bodies of victims at a village destroyed by earthquake and tsunami in Yamadamachi, northeast Japan


If the survivors crowded into rescue centres set up in schools, town halls and other public buildings had held out hope that their missing loved ones might have survived, it was now all but gone.

Instead, their own struggle for survival has become the issue as they shiver in their bitterly-cold surroundings peering out through the doors and windows to watch the snow falling.

The appalling weather has added to the problems for search parties looking for the thousands of bodies known to be buried under wood, slate, mud and vehicles.

 

Devastation: A woman walks through snow-covered rubble in Minamisanriku Town, Miyagi in northern Japan

 

Adrift: A ship floats amongst scattered debris from the city in Wakuya

They wonder what will happen to them, how long they will have to sit it out in these shelters.

Vital medicines are in short supply – a woman tells how her asthma is bad and she cannot sleep; another says she needs special drops for her eyes to prevent the onset of blindness.

Some have decided not to sit it out. One man, wearing a cloth face mask, told a Japanese TV crew: ’I’ve looked my last on what was my home town. I’m about to get on a bus to go to Tokyo and I’ll never come back. I am so sad about this, but this is the end of my life in this area. I’ll start again.’

In the town of Koriyama, 30 miles from the Fukushima nuclear plant, 9,000 refugees are sheltering out of range – they hope – of radioactivity.

’We need food, fuel, water,’ the mayor, Masao Haro, told the Mail.

’Everyone is freezing. We ask for help. If anyone is hearing us, please help in whatever way you can.’