Japan’s Earthquake and Its Many Survivors

Last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan has taken many lives, young and old, male and female. This natural disaster did not discriminate in anyway. Everyone who lived in the Sendai and Fukushima region was at risk.  But even then in the midst of the devastation, some lives were spared. For a reason only God knows, they have life again.  A little 4-month-old’s cry is what brought attention to the rescue workers.

On March 14 soldiers from the Japanese Defense Force were going door-to-door, pulling bodies from homes flattened by the earthquake and tsunami in Ishinomaki City, a coastal town northeast of Sendai. More accustomed to the crunching of rubble and the sloshing of mud than to the sound of life, they dismissed the baby’s cry as a mistake. Until they heard it again. They made their way to the pile of debris, and carefully removed fragments of wood and slate, shattered glass and rocks. And then they saw her: a four-month old baby girl in a pink woolen bear suit. The tidal wave literally swept the unnamed girl away from her parents’ arms when it hit their home on March 11. Since then her parents – both of whom survived the disaster – have taken refuge in their wrecked house, and worried that their little girl was dead. Soldiers managed to reunite the baby with her overjoyed father shortly after the rescue. “Her discovery has put a new energy into the search,” a civil defense official told a local news crew. “We will listen, look and dig with even more diligence after this.” How the child survived drowning – or being crushed by fallen trees and houses – remains a mystery.

Another life that was spared was an elderly women. Here is her story…

Rescuers found the 70-year-old alive inside her home on March 15, four days after the black tidal wave wiped out much of the region. Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani told the Associated Press the woman is now receiving treatment in a local hospital. She is conscious but suffering from hypothermia.

And lastly, a story that is full of courage and determination…

A 60-year old Shinkawa Hiromitsu survived two days at sea by clinging on to his floating rooftop. He was discovered 10 miles off the Japanese coastline. “Several helicopters and ships passed but none of them noticed me,” he said after his March 13 rescue. “I thought that was going to be the last day of my life.

There are many more survival stories as well as those that are truly heroic. I encourage you all to focus on these stories to glean from and to give you hope!

Article from Yahoo! News Time