KURASHIKI, OKAYAMA PREF. \u2013 Residents across the Chugoku region on Monday mourned over 300 people who lost their lives in a devastating\u00a0rain\u00a0that hit mainly that\u00a0area in 2018.<\/p>\n
Monday marked the eighth anniversary of the issuance of the first special heavy rain warning in the disaster.<\/p>\n
Flower-offering ceremonies were held in various parts of Okayama and Hiroshima prefectures in the region to honor the victims, including those who died due to indirect causes.<\/p>\n
In the Okayama city of Kurashiki, where 75 people died, Mayor Kaori Ito offered flowers and a brief prayer at a memorial event in the city\u2019s Mabi district, one of the areas hardest hit by the disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our great responsibility, as those left behind, to pass on to future generations the aspirations of those who died, memories of the disaster and the lessons learned from it,\u201d she told reporters.<\/p>\n
Tomomi Ogura, a 53-year-old after-school child care worker in Kurashiki, also attended the ceremony. She recalled how her home was destroyed by flooding and said she has participated in the memorial event every year since.<\/p>\n
Her son, then a junior high school student, was inspired by the disaster to become a Self-Defense Force officer. \u201cHe has worked hard without forgetting how he felt back then, and I came here today to share that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the hard-hit Koyaura district in the town of Saka, Hiroshima Prefecture, residents also observed a moment of silence. Tadamichi Mizushiri, 64, who lost his mother and aunt, said, \u201cBroken things can be fixed, but lives can\u2019t be brought back,\u201d emphasizing the importance of disaster preparedness.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the disaster\u2019s eighth anniversary, about 50 children from Koyaura Elementary School learned about disaster prevention. Haru Sakamoto, 11, a sixth grader who was three years old at the time of the disaster, said she checks evacuation shelters on a hazard map every year on the anniversary. \u201cI want to increase the number of lives that can be saved,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In the city of Hiroshima, Mayor Kazumi Matsui laid flowers at memorial stands set up at various locations. \u201cI want to use the disaster as a lesson to strengthen disaster preparedness across the entire community,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n
The torrential rain affected 14 prefectures, resulting in 95 deaths in Okayama, 153 in Hiroshima and 33 in Ehime Prefecture in the Shikoku region, including disaster-related deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KURASHIKI, OKAYAMA PREF. \u2013 Residents across the Chugoku region on Monday mourned over 300 people who lost their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1218,6985,8,33,1318,18162],"class_list":["post-53812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-disaster-preparedness","tag-hiroshima","tag-japan","tag-nihon","tag-okayama","tag-rain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}