Friends from the Ocean

April 18, 2011

Today, I want to write about a little realistic story.
I do not think the media would report such topic as this and I want to let people know that it is hard to find dead bodies. I am going to write because I want everyone who is on the same boat as me to take courage. Please skip this portion if you are not interested in.

Today, I went to Rifu with my sister to look for “friends from the ocean.” (We call dead bodies found in the ocean as this so that children would not know.) In conclusion, we could not find our parents among them again today.

Let me explain the procedures to find a dead body (in case of Rifu Grande):
1. When you go for the first time, you register a person who is missing and write any physical features.
2. Take a note of the number of a dead body with the features you are looking for from the list posted on the board.
3. Go to the room of photographs where the police are and look for the body roughly (The pictures in this room are only of those bodies that are at the level where faces are recognizable.)
4. If you cannot find one in this photograph room, you need to ask the police to see the information of bodies that are ranked as severely damaged.)
5. Only when you can confirm with pictures, you are allowed to see the actual body and confirm.

My impression is that this week would probably be the last week in terms of timing for those bodies that you can differentiate from faces. I felt that I would be able to identify my parents at a glance of pictures posted. Unfortunately, today, all of them were someone we did not know…

At the level where you cannot identify bodies (Bodies are swollen like white rubber balloons and on top of it, they look like they are put in formalin.), nobody can identify no matter how one looks at them. You can only see the height and sex, and you confirm with the teeth mark or DNA (which takes time.) If you bring a chart of the teeth mark, you can get it checked in half a day, but with DNA, it seems to take about a month.

For the future search, we registered our DNA. You just need to put a stick with sponge on top in your mouth. As it is time when dead bodies cannot be preserved any more as they are, the direction is to confirm any belongings left, DNA, and teeth mark, and bodies will be cremated or buried. In order to make data of all the bodies and correspond them with search requests, it seems that it will take more than a year.

Thinking about it, I want to write about something I appreciated today. At Rifu where bodies were laid out in repose, there were two volunteer middle-aged ladies in the room with pictures of the bodies that were severely damaged. They talked to us in a very kind manner and searched the numbers with us, which saved our souls. Rather than looking around, being surrounded by the police, we felt relieved to be with middle-aged women who are about the same age as our mother. I know it is a hard job, but we appreciated them very much.

This week is the last week for “friends from the land (dead bodies found in land)” in Onagawa. I heard from a friend in Onagawa that bodies that are severely damaged will be cremated starting next week. (It is not known whether burial will take place as well.) We need to search as much as possible until the end of the week whether land or ocean….