Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town

[Pathfinder]

Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:43 AM on 18th March 2011


Even amid the carnage and despair of Japan's tsunami victims, the plight of the 30 children at Kama Elementary School is heartbreaking.

They sit quietly in the corner of a third-floor classroom where they have waited each day since the tsunami swept into the town of Ishinomaki for their parents to collect them. So far, no one has come and few at the school now believe they will.

Teachers think that some of the boys and girls, aged between eight and 12, know their fathers and mothers are among the missing and will never again turn up at the gates of the school on the eastern outskirts of the town, but they are saying nothing.

Wholesale destruction: A few ruined houses are all that lies scattered amid the sludge of Ishinomaki


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...t-classroom-parents-vanish.html#ixzz1H0gfehPs

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town

Too sad.

.

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town

No graduation at Japanese school after tsunami deaths

By David Dolan
ISHINOMAKI CITY, Japan | Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:25am EDT

ISHINOMAKI CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Teruyuki Kashiba, principal of Okawa elementary school in northeast Japan, should have been celebrating the end of the academic year on Tuesday with a closing ceremony and a graduation for departing sixth-grade students.

Instead, he is dressed in black to mourn the loss of most of his students and teachers to the March 11 tsunami that uprooted trees, ripped away parts of a massive steel bridge and left the school in a ruin of dust and rubble.

Of the 108 children enrolled at Okawa, 74 are dead or missing. Among the graduating class of 21 only five survived and only three of the school's 13 teachers are left.

"I told the children today that although many of their friends have lost their lives or are missing, everyone here should work together and do their best," he told reporters on Tuesday after meeting most of the surviving children.

The students assembled for the first time since the tsunami struck shortly after the end of school on a Friday afternoon, washing away almost all but those who went straight home.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/29/us-japan-tsunami-school-idUSTRE72S1P420110329