'Nothing can prepare you to witness this'

[AsahinaKimi]

By ROB GILHOOLY
Special to The Japan Times

ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Pref. — It's a relatively minor incident that gets me. I'm at a gymnasium in central Ishinomaki photographing members of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) as they unload dozens of corpses from a truck. Each is wrapped in blankets, some with flowery designs far too cheerful for this occasion.

There is only one stretcher available, so the process is painfully slow. The bodies are trundled away one by one past forlorn racks of volleyballs and basketballs and a reception area for surviving family members of those killed who had been brought to a makeshift morgue in the large hall. Inside, around 200 bodies have been cleaned, identified and lined up in neat rows then covered from head to toe with crisp white sheets.

As the body of one elderly man is lifted by GSDF members, whose job of searching for the thousands who perished in the March 11 megaquake and tsunami must rank as one of the world's worst, a shoe falls, exposing a mud-caked woolly sock and a white, grimy ankle.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20110320x1.html

:cry:

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. amazing pic.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. The juxtaposition of the survivors amidst the ruin is powerful.

It's fucking terrible.

[midnight]

3. Extremely overwhelming... May this soon be a distant experience for these people....

[stevedeshazer]

4. Very, very sad.

My heart aches.

[AlecBGreen]

5. Hang in there AK

:hug:

"Here, at 2.46 p.m. on March 11, just as the quake hit," she says, "a baby boy was born." What's more, mother and child survived the quake and the subsequent tsunami.

[AsahinaKimi]

6. Maybe they will name the child

大震災 Daishinsai = great (in size) earthquake.

[Night Crawler]

7. My granddaughter is a US Airforce forensic nurse

Stationed at Yokota. The base is currently involved with Operation Tomodach (I think that means friend) and has been flying the C-130's up to the devastated airport in Sendia bringing in all kinds of supplies and relief material. Unfortunately that includes the setting up of temporary morgues. She's reasonably hardened to a lot having flown medivac from Ramstein to Iraq and Afghanistan, but when I am able to get on the Skype with her she looks and sounds more shaken than I've ever seen or heard her.

Take a look at the photo's on Yokota's website, see what our young people can do.

http://www.yokota.af.mil/
Should have included these
http://newpreview.afnews.af.mil/yokota/photos/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=3107

[liberaltrucker]

8. .. a baby boy was born

Perhaps he will grow up and discover a solution
to this nuclear madness.

[AsahinaKimi]

9. onegaishimasu!

[Enthusiast]

10. Horrible...nt

[Selatius]

11. We did this after Katrina with all the dead bodies.

I was in the Red Cross in those days as a rescue volunteer. The search unit I was attached to found a fair number of bodies. Makeshift morgues were set up in the devastated city, and we piled the bodies there for future identification. Because the weather was so hot in the days after Katrina and because the power grid was destroyed, bodies that weren't claimed by family members or identified after a day or two were placed in refrigerated trucks or driven out of the area to places with such trucks. Even then, the stench of rotting flesh in humid heat is absolutely overpowering.