Heartbreaking: Elderly Japanese hard hit as hope for missing fades

[sixmile]

I fear this is exactly how the elderly and poor will be treated in the U.S. during a disaster, too. Forgotten.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/17/japan-earthquake-2011-elderly-hard-hit_n_837117.html

snip

'About 23 percent of Japan's 127 million people are age 65 or over, nearly double the proportion in the United States.

Japan's rural areas have been in decline for years, and many of the small coastal towns hit hardest by the tsunami had seen an exodus of young people moving to cities for work.

Now the low-lying parts of those towns have been flattened, and as much as half the population in some may have been killed. The official death toll climbed over 5,300 Thursday and is expected to top 10,000.

Kanno, the woman who couldn't keep up with her neighbors, comes from one such town – Rikuzentakata, a port city that was home to 20,000 before the disaster.

When the tsunami surged into Rikuzentakata, her 67-year-old sister Masako Maiya rushed down from her home in the hills with her husband, Katsuo.

They only got as far as a bridge. Down below, they saw the town had become a muddy inland sea.

One of Kanno's neighbors told them she saw Kanno and her husband flee, but the couple was slow and had lagged behind.

For five days, the Maiyas went from morgue to morgue, looking for the Kannos' bodies. On Thursday, they decided to visit the site where their home stood.

"The house should be around here," Masako Maiya said, stopping in front of a pile of splintered wood and mud.

A pained moan escaped from her husband's mouth. "There's nothing," he said, taking off his glasses and wiping tears from his eyes. His wife began to sob too. Still crying, they turned and walked away.'

more at link

[somone]

1. Yep. Many victims are elderly

An elderly man and woman push a cart carrying their salvaged belongings in Miyako, in Iwate prefecture, on March 16


Sixty-six-year-old Yoshikatsu Hiratsuka cries in front of his collapsed house with his son still missing, possibly buried in the rubble, at Onagawa town in Miyagi prefecture on March 17