The Iwate police stopped dispatching officers this month from inland stations to coastal areas for monthly intensive searches for missing people. This was mainly due to a dwindling number of search requests from families of the missing and municipalities hit by the tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake.
However, police will continue their search around the 11th of each month but with fewer officers, said Keiki Chida, deputy chief of the prefectural police's security division.
The police stopped dispatching officers from inland stations once before, in January, but they resumed supporting the operations in June following an increasing number of requests from families and other people. More than 100 officers from these stations took part in the search each month.
For example, of the 400 cumulative officers who participated in the search from Oct. 10 to 13, 176 came from inland stations, according to the prefectural police.
Sunday will mark 20 months since the disaster, and the number of search requests has declined. In an increasing number of cases, police have been asked to comb the same sites two or three times. Therefore, they decided to conduct intensive searches only with riot police officers and those from coastal stations.
This month, searches will be carried out for eight days from Wednesday and will mobilize about 100 officers in total. Next March--the second anniversary of the quake and tsunami disaster--the police will conduct a massive search for victims.
Meanwhile, the Miyagi prefectural police has maintained its special search squad of about 160 officers, but has scaled down its operations.
Beginning in March, the squad shifted in principle from an intensive search around the 11th of each month to smaller-scale searches twice a week. It carried out three searches in September and October, respectively. It plans to conduct several searches this month in Higashi-Matsushima and other places.
This month the prefectural police cut the number of officers exclusively assigned to a task force that identifies the bodies of unknown victims. The number of unidentified bodies has fallen from about 1,250 in April last year to about 340 in March and less than 80 recently.
Some officers who were assigned to the force have been sent back to their previous sections, but those remaining are determined to see the mission through to the end.
"We'll do our best to identify the last of the bodies," an officer in charge said.
As of the end of October, four bodies had been found this year in Iwate Prefecture, but none were discovered during a police search. In Miyagi Prefecture, five bodies were found in February and a skeleton was uncovered during the latest search by the police on Sept. 11.
According to the National Police Agency, 1,195 people were missing in Iwate Prefecture and 1,359 people were missing in Miyagi Prefecture as of Oct. 31.
Friday 9 November 2012
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T121109002169.htm
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