52 Months on; Continued Efforts to Find Missing Persons

Four years and four months passed since the Great Tohoku Earthquake, and efforts to restore crumbled infrastructure including road and dikes continue in disaster-hit areas. Landscapes have changed acccoringly with signs of the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami disappeared, leaving less and less traces that reveal the ravage of the disaster.
In the city of Ishinomaki, the worst hit area, as many as 3,453 people lost their lives either directly or indirectly by the disaster and 428 are still missing, and even now the search activities for the missing people are carried out on the 11th of each month.

【A photo in the Ishinomaki Nichinichi Shinbun】



Combing a vast area for missing persons began this month in Nagatsura district, Ishinomki,
Situated at the mouth of the Kitakami River, Nagatsura district was inundated due to land sinking subsequent to the earthquake. While the Self-Defense Forces searched the district from boats right after the earthquake, no search activities have been conducted since then. The completion of dike restoration work accelerated the pace of draining the district, and made it possible to conduct full-scale search activities.

The tsunami destroyed dikes and submerged the right section of the Kitakami River’s downstream areas including not only Ngatsura district but Okawa district where a total of 2,489 people of 712 households used to live, killing 382 people including 84 pupils and teachers of Okawa elementary school and leaving 36 people including four pupils missing

Disaster restoration housing is now ready to receive victims living in temporary quarters, signaling post-quake restoration is rolling forward. In this situation JEN continues helping disaster victims find their way back to normal as soon as they can.

【A big-picture view of Ishinomaki】