Casualties and Damages

Woes mount for tsunami survivors

By Chang-Ran Kim (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-18 07:53

One man's sacrifice

A group of 20 Chinese restaurant trainees who survived the earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, credit a local man with saving their lives.

"We would be dead without local people's help," said teary-eyed Yi Yanan, a Chinese trainee from Dalian, Liaoning province.

Twenty Chinese trainees from the Sato Seafood Limited Company escaped from their dormitory after the earthquake occurred.

Atsushi Sato, the senior managing director of the company, led them to a shrine nearby at a higher elevation. He then left to search for his wife and daughter but never returned.

Another local company, Okasei, moved five of its Chinese trainees to safety at a hot-spring hotel at the top of a nearby hill.

Half of the 10,000 residents in Onagawa are reported missing.

Xinhua - China Daily