Okawa Elementary School

Okawa Elementary School (Japanese: 大川小学校, Hepburn: Ōkawa Shōgakkō) was an educational institution in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The school was destroyed in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. 74 of its 108 students, who had been sheltering in the school on the instructions of their teachers rather than evacuating to higher ground, were killed as it ran up the nearby Kitakami River. Only four students present at the tsunami's arrival to the school survived. Ten of its eleven teachers also died. It was found that the school was unprepared for such an event, and that the scale of the tsunami had not been realized until it was too late. In 2014, the families of 23 of the children who died sued Ishinomaki City and Miyagi Prefecture for compensation.[1] In October 2016, they were awarded compensation of ¥1.4 billion (US$12.8 million).[2]

Devastated classrooms at the school.

References
  1. "The school beneath the wave: the unimaginable tragedy of Japan's tsunami". the Guardian. 2017-08-24. Retrieved 2022-08-30.
  2. "大川小津波訴訟、市と県に14億円賠償命令 仙台地裁". 産経フォト (in Japanese). SANKEI DIGITAL INC. 2016-10-26. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ishinomaki Municipal Okawa Elementary School.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.