After wife and sons die in tsunami, finding solace in working with the dead

The first time Yuya Kawamura saw his newborn son, the baby was already dead.

The infant’s brother, just 11 months old, was found in the arms of his mother. They, too, were dead, victims of the tsunami that swept away their house in Iwate Prefecture two years ago.

Listless for months after the disaster, the grieving father thought about killing himself.

But with so much death haunting his life, the 28-year-old found a rather unorthodox place to come to terms with his loss and find a reason to live.

“I am working as a mortician because I lost my wife and children,” Kawamura said. “My right hand is my elder son, and my left hand is my younger son. I think my skills will improve when my children grow.”

Kawamura, who is training to become an embalmer, finds meaning in his work because he says it draws him closer to his family members.

His job also allows him to help people see their dead loved ones for the last time in a way that they should be remembered, something that Kawamura was unable to do with his own family.

Kawamura was in Morioka on a business trip when the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake struck off the northeastern coast on March 11, 2011.

His wife, 20, was with the two boys at their home in a coastal town. She had returned the previous day six days after giving birth to the younger son.

Fifteen minutes after the temblor, Kawamura contacted his wife on her cellphone. “We are about to flee,” she said.

Kawamura sped back in his car and reached the town the following morning. It was gone.

He spotted the red roof of his house 200 meters inland from where it originally stood. After desperately removing the debris, he found his wife holding the elder son.

“My wife was strong-minded, but she appeared as if she were sleeping. She looked peaceful and beautiful,” Kawamura said. “Only her arms were rigid, as if she would never let him go.”

He asked police to keep the two bodies as they were. Before the bodies were transferred to a crematorium, Kawamura removed his son and held him in his arms.

“I am sorry. I am sorry I could not save you,” he kept saying.

The body of the younger son was found in April. Kawamura went to a morgue, where the tiny body was laid beside a hooded blanket that his brother had also used.

Kawamura was already on the business trip when his second son was born. “I had seen his face only in photos e-mailed to my cellphone,” he said.

Police officers advised Kawamura not to look at the body of the boy.

“But I wanted to hold him in my arms by any means,” he said.

He told the baby, “We are together at long last.”

After the funerals of his family members, Kawamura resigned from his company and left the town.

“I did not feel like doing anything,” he said.

He did not want to return to Miyako, his hometown, and instead stayed in the prefectural capital of Morioka.

“All of a sudden, I thought I wanted to die,” he said. “When I was driving a car, I wondered whether I could die if I crashed into the one running in front.”

But a former classmate from Miyako told Kawamura about an embalmer who was volunteering her time to restore the remains of disaster victims. He found a flier in his mailbox seeking morticians and immediately called to apply.

Kawamura said one of the main reasons he applied was because he could not do anything for his three beloved ones before they were cremated.

“I laid a dress over my wife before the coffin left, but I was not able to put it on for her,” he said. “I was not able to put on some makeup for her, either. If I had known how, I might have been able to restore the face of my younger son to look like the one in the photos.”

It was a demanding job looking at one dead person after another, and he wanted to quit countless times.

But he embraced the work after listening to a speech by the volunteer embalmer in May 2012.

She told Kawamura that she was glad he was alive and cried for him.

“An embalmer puts dead people back in shape and returns them to their families so that the families can cry,” she said. “An embalmer re-connects dead people with their families.”

When Kawamura helps clean the bodies of children, he recalls how he felt when he lost his sons and recounts his experiences to the parents to help them cope with their loss.

After listening to his story, some parents speak about their memories of their loved ones, such as their lovely smiles.

“Working as a mortician drives home how family members hold their lost ones near and dear,” Kawamura said, mentioning the way they touch the faces of the bodies in the coffins. “I am learning how valuable lives are.”

The disaster struck before spring arrived in the Tohoku region.

Kawamura keeps cherry blossoms, a favorite of his wife, in his funeral makeup box. He said he wants the victims to see the spring flowers in the afterworld.

He said he might not have survived if he had found a different job.

“I kept apologizing to my wife and sons for one year after the earthquake, saying, ‘I am sorry I could not save you,’” he said. “I now thank them for being with me.”

His wife’s cellphone appeared to have been destroyed by the tsunami, but it suddenly turned on when Kawamura was toying with it in November.

When he opened a video stored in the phone, the elder son called to him, “Dad!”

“A long time ago, I might have felt so sad to see this that I would want to die,” Kawamura said. “Today, I am glad to see him. I can say this from the bottom of my heart.”

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/life_and_death/AJ201303050084

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Blaze kills 9 children at Koranic school in Senegal

A child’s sandal, a charred begging bowl, some fire-singed tin plates. Little else but cinders remained Monday of the house here where 60 children were crammed in by a Muslim holy man to study the Koran — and beg.

At least nine children died in the fire late Sunday night in the dense Medina neighborhood here, residents and Senegal’s state news agency said. Seven of them were Koranic students, or talibés, as they are called here, small boys entrusted by impoverished parents to study under the holy man in the evenings and beg for him by day.

The seven had been locked in their room in the wooden dwelling and could not be saved, residents said, as flames, fanned by high winds from the nearby Atlantic Ocean, consumed the house. The other children managed to escape, they said, or had been sleeping outside.

Human rights groups say there are some 50,000 of these children here, some as young as 5, forced to beg on dangerous streets by the holy men, known as marabouts, and kept in precarious living conditions in flimsy dwellings, often given little to eat.

For years, Western rights groups and foreign documentary makers have denounced the practice. Governments here promise reforms to appease outside donors and embassies, but then backtrack in the face of opposition from religious leaders.

Within Senegal, there is sporadic pressure to end the system, and last month the government promised, again, to end forced child-begging by 2015. Human Rights Watch, which reported extensively on the practice three years ago, said Sunday’s fire underscored the urgent need for reform. In its 2010 report, the group said the children were often severely punished if they failed to meet a begging quota each day.

Cases of talibés being crushed in traffic while begging are frequently reported in the local news media, but the number of deaths in the fire made it one of the worst accidents involving the boys in recent years. The marabout was not even on the premises when the fire started, residents said.

“They were here alone,” said Ismael Gakou, 32, a shopkeeper who lives next door. “How can you leave them alone like that?”

“They read the Koran until 8 p.m., then he leaves for his apartment,” Mr. Gakou said, referring to the marabout. “He treats them badly.”

There is little electricity in the neighborhood, and residents said that an overturned candle in the boys’ room had started the fire. By the time the fire department arrived, at least 15 minutes after the alarm was raised — pushing through the warren of narrow, sandy alleys leading to the house — it was too late.

“When the fire started, the children were locked in the room,” said Awa Sow, who also lived in the one-story, 12-room house. “They were yelling. But nobody could get in.”

Hadi Sane, 30, a waitress who lives next door, saw flames begin to engulf the building around 11 p.m. “I came running,” but it was too late, she said.

“They were living there alone, 5, 10 years old,” she said. “I wouldn’t give my child up for that. They didn’t eat well, or sleep well. We’ve got to put that marabout in prison.”

The ground at her feet was blackened, and the air still smelled heavily of the fire, despite the ocean breeze. A crowd of onlookers pressed up against the site, and government officials stood around awkwardly. The state news agency said there would be an investigation.

“In the face of this tragedy, the Senegalese government must finally tackle the country’s widespread abuse and exploitation of young boys through forced begging,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement Monday. “Tens of thousands of boys continue to live and beg in extremely precarious conditions, enriching teachers who have twisted the country’s proud tradition of religious education.”

Mr. Gakou, the neighbor, saw the victims’ remains carried out early Monday in plastic bags. “The whole neighborhood is in mourning,” he said. “Nobody around here has slept.

Rescue workers recovered the bodies of nine other children, but their ages and identities were not immediately known. Large crowds of residents were at the scene of the blaze on Monday as a number of government officials visited the site, promising a thorough investigation.

After visiting the scene, Senegal's President Macky Sall, a Muslim, said Koranic schools that exploited children and failed to ensure they were safe would be shut.

The children would be sent back to their families, he said.

The BBC's Thomas Fessy in Dakar says human rights groups have repeatedly warned of the poor conditions in which children are housed in Koranic schools, and some teachers have been accused of abuses.

Most of the pupils - known as "talibes" in the local language, Wolof - end up begging on the streets for money and food which they have to take back to their teachers, our correspondent adds.

Fire engines were reported to have struggled to drive down the narrow road leading to the school, hampering efforts to extinguish the blaze.

Dakar's mayor, Khalifa Sall, told local RFM radio that the ramshackle development of densely populated residential areas in the city made it impossible for the emergency services to operate effectively.

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21671889

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/world/africa/fire-in-senegal-kills-child-beggars-trapped-in-house.html?_r=0

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Mexico's disappeared

The full scale of Mexico's bloody drug war during the last six years is only now becoming apparent. Nearly 70,000 people died and more than 26,000 went missing between 2006 and 2012. A scathing new report by Human Rights Watch casts substantial blame for the problem on the country's security forces, which it says have not only been implicated in many of the underlying crimes but have failed to adequately investigate claims by friends and family members of the victims. The result, the report says, is the "most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades."

Human Rights Watch researchers looked into a few hundred cases and confirmed 149 examples of enforced disappearances by security forces. They described a pattern in which uniformed soldiers or police detain people without arrest orders or probable cause — at their homes, in front of family members, at checkpoints or in public settings. The arrests are almost never officially registered and the arrestees are not turned over to the prosecutor's office, as required by law. When relatives arrive to ask about the detainees, the report said, "they are told that the detentions never took place."

These are familiar allegations. But Human Rights Watch also shows how the authorities fail to follow up or investigate — declining to trace cellphones or obtain footage from security cameras or track the bank transactions of the disappeared.

It now falls to President Enrique Peña Nieto to address the crisis of the disappeared. Clearly, there is no single solution to the problem of drug violence and impunity in Mexico; myriad reforms are needed. But a good and simple place for the new administration to begin is to create a central and accurate database of missing people and unidentified remains. Those records would provide an important resource for prosecutors, police and family members of those who are missing.

Until late last month, there was only an unofficial list of names, which has since become public. Before that, local authorities who received reports about disappearances could share information only by calling individual agencies in other states. Often, they simply failed to do so.

The list of missing persons is still too vague, often failing to include basic information such as age, height or even scars. The registry should be expanded to include a more comprehensive profile, including DNA samples of family members. That information could then be used to test against unidentified human remains, including those found in recent years in mass graves.

The United States has pledged nearly $2 billion in aid since 2007 to help Mexico fight a shared drug war. The Obama administration should encourage the new government to ensure that the database is up and running quickly, and that the disappearances are fully investigated.

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-disappeared-mexico-human-rights-watch-20130305,0,4235175.story

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Update: 7 killed in plane crash in Congo's east city of Goma

A plane crash in the center of the eastern city of Goma killed seven people and injured three, Congolese officials have now confirmed.

The Ukrainian pilot of the plane for CAA managed to avoid buildings in the densely populated area, and crashed the plane on the fences in the backyard of a housing plot. The plane had taken off from the city of Kananga in the country's southwest, stopped in Lodja and was on its way to Goma before the crash, Goma's mayor said.

"There was a thunderstorm and we heard a loud noise. We went out and saw a plane in the backyard. I hadn't realized a plane had crashed, I was under the impression that it was loud thunder," said Lauren Welsh, a resident of the nearby house.

As night fell, the rescue team arrived on site and started tearing apart the plane to extract the bodies of six people. The body of one crew member is still missing, said an authority with the airplane company, Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation, or CAA. The authority spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to speak to the press.

The CAA official and rescue authorities confirmed that 10 people were on board. Rescue officials found six dead bodies, including the pilot. An official with the company said five crew were among the dead, one crew member was missing and one passenger was killed. Three Congolese men survived the crash and were taken to the hospital, he said.

Goma mayor Naasson Kubuya confirmed that seven were dead. The mayor had earlier said 40 people were on board and only four people survived based on initial police estimations.

"The pilot managed to avoid houses," said Kubuya. "It's a horrifying accident. The city of Goma has become a field of disasters. We sympathize with the families of the deceased."

The plane crashed due to bad weather conditions, he said.

Given the number of crashes in eastern Congo every year, the mayor of Goma called on national authorities to increase measures to improve air traffic and safety.

Last year, a plane crash in the city of Bukavu killed President Joseph Kabila's personal adviser, Augustin Katumba, and four others.

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130305/af-congo-plane-crash/?utm_hp_ref=homepage&ir=homepage

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Update: At least nine die in plane crash in Congolese town of Goma

At least nine people were killed on Monday when a twin-propeller plane crashed as it tried to land in bad weather in the eastern Congolese town of Goma, the government said.

It was not immediately clear how many people were on board the Fokker 50, which was operated by domestic airline CAA. The flight was arriving from the town of Lodja, some 700 km (440 miles) to the west in Kasai-Oriental province, central Congo.

A government spokesman said that, as the plane was loaded with cargo, it was not carrying its full capacity of 50 passengers.

CAA declined to comment.

Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the world's worst air safety records. There have been numerous crashes in Goma, the main town in the east, where the runway has not been fully repaired after a volcanic eruption in 2002 left it covered in lava.

"For the moment we have counted nine dead, passengers and crew," said government spokesman Lambert Mende.

"No one on the ground was killed. The plane fell in an empty space, and because of the rain, no one was around. It was really lucky," he added.

A Reuters reporter at the scene saw four bodies removed from the wreckage of the plane, which was lying in several pieces.

Local authorities said at least three people survived the crash.

The plane came down in heavy rain in a residential area near government offices and a base used by United Nations peacekeepers.

Mende said the plane had been in good condition: "It was a Fokker 50 ... I'd taken it many times myself."

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://news.yahoo.com/least-nine-die-plane-crash-congolese-town-goma-191840677.html

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Haunted by trauma, tsunami survivors in Japan turn to exorcists

The tsunami that engulfed northeastern Japan two years ago has left some survivors believing they are seeing ghosts. In a society wary of admitting to mental problems, many are turning to exorcists for help.

Tales of spectral figures lined up at shops where now there is only rubble are what psychiatrists say is a reaction to fear after the March 11, 2011, disaster in which nearly 19,000 people were killed.

"The places where people say they see ghosts are largely those areas completely swept away by the tsunami," said Keizo Hara, a psychiatrist in the city of Ishinomaki, one of the areas worst-hit by the waves touched off by an offshore earthquake.

"We think phenomena like ghost sightings are perhaps a mental projection of the terror and worries associated with those places." Hara said post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) might only now be emerging in many people, and the country could be facing a wave of stress-related problems.

"It will take time for PTSD to emerge for many people in temporary housing for whom nothing has changed since the quake," he said. Shinichi Yamada escaped the waves that destroyed his home and later salvaged two Buddhist statues from the wreckage. But when he brought them back to the temporary housing where he lived, he said strange things began to happen. His two children suddenly got sick and an inexplicable chill seemed to follow the family through the house, he said. "A couple of times when I was lying in bed, I felt something walking across me, stepping across my chest," Yamada said.

Many people in Japan hold on to ancient superstitions despite its ultra-modern image. Yamada, like many other people in the area, turned to exorcist Kansho Aizawa for help. Aizawa, 56, dressed in a black sweater and trousers and with dangling pearl earrings, said in an interview in her home that she had seen numerous ghosts.

"There are headless ghosts, and some missing hands or legs. Others are completely cut in half," she said. "People were killed in so many different ways during the disaster and they were left like that in limbo.

So it takes a heavy toll on us, we see them as they were when they died." In some places destroyed by the tsunami, people have reported seeing ghostly apparitions queuing outside supermarkets which are now only rubble.

Taxi drivers said they avoided the worst-hit districts for fear of picking up phantom passengers. "At first, people came here wanting to find the bodies of their family members. Then they wanted to find out exactly how that person died, and if their spirit was at peace," Aizawa said. As time passed, people's requests changed.

"They've started wanting to transmit their own messages to the dead," Aizawa said. Shinichi Yamada said life had improved since he put the two Buddhist statues in a shrine and prayed. He still believes the statues are haunted, but now thinks their spirits are at peace.

Tuesday 5 March 2013

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_haunted-by-trauma-tsunami-survivors-in-japan-turn-to-exorcists_1807563

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Karachi blast: Postmortem of 44 bodies completed

Postmortem examinations of 44 bodies of Abbas Twon blast victims have been completed.

Police surgeon Dr Jalil Qadir Memon told Geo News that postmortem of 32 bodies had been completed overnight at the Jinnah Hospital while a body of a female victim was shifted to the medical facility in the morning.

Assistant Police Surgeon Dr Saleem Raza said 10 bodies were handed over to families after completion of medico-legal formalities at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

According to Dr Qarar Abbasi a body was shifted to the Civil Hospital while Edhi spokesman said 26 bodies were kept in Edhi morgue, of which, six were handed over to their relatives. He said seven bodies were still unidentified out of the remaining 20.

More than 40 people including women and children were killed and 135 others sustained injuries after a powerful blast ripped through a densely populated area near Abbas Town.

According to sources, the perpetrators used a remote-detonated improvised explosive device (IED) planted at the entrance of Abbas Town to bomb their targets.

Another low intensity blast was also reported to have followed the main one, which the sources said could have been a CNG cylinder explosion.

The area plunged into darkness as the shock wave and flying debris felled many electricity poles. A Pole Mounted Transformer (PMT) was also reported to have broken down --some said it exploded-- after the blast.

"There were two blasts but it was not clear whether the second was also a bomb", IG of Police SIndh Fayaz Lughari told a foreign news agency.

Fire broke out in some of the apartment buildings after the blast, which the fire brigade was trying to bring under control with the help of tenders and a snorkel.

"Thick black smoke is billowing from the site of the blast. The whole area reeks of detonated explosives", said sources right after the blast.

The blast left a four-feet deep and ten-feet wide crater, security officials said later.

In the beginning the police said the Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) was planted in a motorcycle, however the devastation the blast unleashed did not add up with the cops bike-borne-bomb theory, which bomb disposal squad proved wrong later.

"At least 150 kilograms of explosives were used in the VBIED, which you cannot hide inside a bike. Our findings suggest a four-wheeler was used as the carrier of the bomb evident from parts of a car engine found from the site", sources quoted the bomb experts as saying.

However an eyewitness said he saw a Suzuki Bolan and a rickshaw entering the area minutes before the explosion.

The local residents did not wait for the government officials or other rescue services and started pulling people out of the rubble and rushing them to the hospitals on their own. They complained that no government team or machinery showed up after the blast.

In the wake of the blast security personnel did arrive at the spot but backed off soon after.

"Lawmen including Rangers are nowhere near the site of tragedy. They are shy of facing the bereaved and the catastrophe which befell them. We can see them deployed at a distance", they said.

According to DSP Sachal Qamar Ahmed, the explosive device was planted inside a motorcycle, which the perpetrators parked in populous residential/commercial area.

"There are many teashops and eateries in the area so we fear the casualties might rise", said police. Police added that the target of the bombing were the worshipers coming out of a nearby mosque.

The blast left two apartment buildings, dozens of shops, and a couple of nearby bank branches in ruins, sources said.

"So powerful was the explosion that the facades of several apartments facing the site of blast were blown off the buildings. Windowpanes of most of the surrounding buildings turned into smithereens. Even some doors came off the hinges", they added.

Moreover the natural gas leaking profusely from broken the plumbing is also posing a serious threat as people have been warned not to strike matches or smoke in the area, sources warned further. Later the gas company announced it had disconnected the supply to the area.

The injured were shifted to different hospitals of the city.

Sources in Patel Hospital confirmed seven fatalities along with seven cases of critical injuries.

On the other hand Abbasi Shaheed Hospital authorities say they have received seven dead bodies and ten injured.

At least 20 dead bodies and seven injured including three children and a married couple were in Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre emergency room, said Dr Simi, In-charge Emergency JPMC.

Also, three dead bodies reached Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) where at least 70 injured of the blast were also under treatment , the sources told Geo News.

Liaquat National Hospital authorities also confirmed receiving two dead bodies.

Sindh Chief Minister, Qaim Ali Shah condemning the incident in strongest terms announced Rs1.5 million for each bereaved family and Rs1 million per injured.

Meanwhile the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has announced a day of mourning, while the Jafria Alliance has announced a strike on Monday.

Moreover, Majlis e Wahdat Muslimeen, Tahaffuz-e-Azadari Council,Shia Ulema Council, and Quetta Yekjehti Council have also announced three days of mourning.

According to a statement issued by Private School Association, all the associated private educational institutes will remain closed on Monday.

The All Pakistan Tajir Ittehad has also declared Monday as a shutter-down day, which means no business would be conducted in any market of the metropolis.

The Goods Transport Association has also declared that truckers will not hit the roads on Monday.

Monday 4 March 2013

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-90650-Above-40-dead,-dozens-injured-in-Karachi-blast

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-90695-Karachi-blast:-Postmortem-of-44-bodies-completed

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Bodies of Egyptian balloon crash victims identified, return to Japan

The bodies of the four Japanese tourists that were killed in the hot air balloon crash in Egypt last week returned to Japan on Monday, arriving at Narita International Airport. The four victims, two married couples, each in their 60s, were accompanied by nine relatives who flew to Egypt last week in order to confirm their identities.

The identities of the victims have been released, with both couples coming from Tokyo: 66 year old Kazuo Tsuge, the chairman of a transport company that specialized in moving racehorses, and his wife, Harumi, 63. The others were Yasuhide Terada and his wife Asako, both 63. Their relatives traveled to Cairo on Thursday, February 28th in order to view the bodies in a local morgue, as well as visit some of the tourists spots, like the Great Pyramid of Giza, last visited by the victims before the accident that killed 19 people in total.

On Tuesday, February 26th, a hot air balloon carrying 21 people, including its pilot, caught fire and fell to the ground in the city of Luxor, a popular tourist spot. Two people managed to survive by jumping from the basket when it was still at a low altitude, before the fire caused the balloon to soar. Recent years have other balloon accidents within Egypt’s tourism industry, resulting in the questioning of safety standards and the government to call for an investigation into the accident.

Monday 4 March 2013

http://japandailypress.com/bodies-of-egyptian-balloon-crash-victims-identified-return-to-japan-0524513

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