Ghost Of The Tsunami

The tsunami from the March 2011 earthquake affected me as I was living in Japan, but I was living in Tokyo and knew few people from Tohoku where the earthquake caused the most damage-so it was somewhat of an abstraction for me. Richard Lloyd Parry's book Ghosts Of The Tsunami (2017) did an excellent job of putting that abstraction into perspective by focusing on one specific tragedy-one school in Okawa where 74 children were killed-almost every other school in Tohoku was properly evacuated save this one. So in one sense this is a sort of mystery story-why didn't the school evacuate to higher ground and then it became the source of closure for many parents who lost their children-the need to know why and assign blame to someone or something. But is it also an indictment of educational institutions, the failure of institution was a theme that Parry also explored in his previous book about the Lucie Blackman murder investigation, People Who Eat Darkness, in which he finds fault with the police institution which mishandled the case. Parry is quick to point out that the individuals involved are often exemplary, but things get sticky when the institutions themselves get involved-they seem to be self protective in nature and forget they have been established for the populace. There are several heartbreaking stories of personal loss that put a faces to the tragedy where 18,000 people perished, it is a heart breaking event that will not be easily forgotten by anyone who lived through it-myself included. Parry struggles to remain objective, but the reporting exposes petty grudges between survivors who recovered their children, only lost one child, and other pointless distinctions-are there levels of grief? Maybe, but there should be empathy for everyone. One of the reasons the book came out six years after the fact is that the case agiasnt the school board of Okawa for negligence was nto settled until 2016, which was quick according to Parry's investigation, which highlights another poorly working institution, the courts and legal system (but that's another book). Parry has written another powerful and expertly researched and reported book that reveals much about the Japanese people in this story of closure from the great Tohoku earthquake of 2011.