SENDAI — Some 100 officers from the Miyagi Prefectural Police force conducted an intensive search Monday for remains near an elementary school in Ishinomaki that lost 70 of its 108 students to the quake and tsunami on March 11.
Nine of the 13 teachers and administrative staff at Okawa Elementary School also died, and four students and a teacher are still listed as missing, along with 45 other residents of the Okawa district.
Police searched the Fuji River, which runs in front of the school, and have dammed up the waterway for about 1.3 km in order to dredge riverbed mud in the search for remains.
"Our search operation will not end as long as there are missing people," one of the officers said.
In Fukushima Prefecture, police began a three-day search along the coast Sunday for people still listed as missing inside the no-go zone around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
On the first day of the three-day search operation, which involved around 300 officers, including personnel loaned from other prefectures who are being deployed within the zone for the first time, efforts were focused on the Ukedo district in the town of Namie, where around 120 people died or remain missing.
The Fukushima Prefectural Police force has been reinforced with 350 officers from Tokyo and 21 other prefectures, and 145 of them have been assigned to deal with the increasing number of thefts in the hot zone.
"I am acutely aware that huge scars have been left by the quake and tsunami," said Koji Tanaka, a 30-year-old police officer from Saga Prefecture who joined Sunday's search.
"Since Saga also has a nuclear plant, I'm thinking every day what we should do if a similar disaster occurs." he said.
Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012
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