ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Parents of children killed in the Great East Japan Earthquake held portraits of their offspring at Okawa Elementary School’s graduation ceremony on March 17.
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Parents of children killed in the Great East Japan Earthquake held portraits of their offspring at Okawa Elementary School’s graduation ceremony on March 17.
The ceremony was held at Ishinomaki’s Iinokawa Daiichi Elementary School, where Okawa Elementary has been holding classes.
The graduates were in the fifth grade when last year's tsunami killed six of the 15.
In total, 84 of the school’s pupils and teachers perished in the disaster.
The parents and sister of Chisato Shito, one of the dead fifth graders, attended the graduation with a portrait of Chisato.
Her mother, Sayomi, 46, said they had attended because she felt it would be a pity if Chisato remained a fifth-grader forever. She said she wanted her daughter to graduate with her classmates.
The portrait photo of Chisato had been taken by her sister Tomoka, 14. One of Chisato’s classmates attached a red flower to the picture.
“She couldn’t wait to become a junior high school student,” recalled Takahiro, her father. “She was quite grown up. Two of her good friends were a year older.”
Chisato had planned to join a volleyball club at her junior high school and her father said he remembered her watching the junior high school club’s practices.
Takahiro, 47, identified his daughter’s body two days after the tsunami, which also killed two of her close friends.
Chisato’s parents were invited to a thank-you party held by graduates for their parents earlier this month. Sayomi said she had been reluctant to attend until the last moment, but Chisato had appeared to her in a dream the night before the event, smiling and rushing toward her. She interpreted that as meaning her daughter wanted to join the party.
She remembered the surviving children and their parents singing the popular graduation song “Mirai e” (Toward the future) at the party, a song Chisato had practiced when she was in the fourth grade to sing to the senior year. She said she felt her daughter was “singing there with us.”
Shortly after Chisato’s body was found, Sayomi said she heard her daughter telling her in a clear voice: “I am all right. The lives of those who have survived would be much tougher. Mom, please take care of them.”
Sayomi said she still thinks about the meaning of the words, but she has been left with an abiding wish to look after the surviving children.
“The students Chisato studied with until March 11 were, and still are, her classmates,” Sayomi said.