TOKYO, Oct 19 — Fourteen years and seven months after a tsunami triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake swept her away, the family of six-year-old Natsuse Yamane finally received her remains on October 16, bringing a bittersweet closure to years of uncertainty.
“You tried so hard. Thank you for coming back to us,” said Chiyumi Yamane, 49, as she tightly held the small urn containing her daughter’s partial remains, according to The Japan News.
Her husband, Tomonori Yamane, 52, and their son Daiya, 26, accompanied her to Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi prefecture, where police handed over the remains.
“We’ve kept you waiting for a long time,” said Hiroshi Kano, Minami-Sanriku police station chief, as he presented the container wrapped in cloth to the tearful mother.
Natsuse had been at home with her grandmother when the tsunami struck on March 11, 2011. Miraculously, her grandmother survived, but Natsuse was swept away.
In the days and months that followed, the family searched temporary morgues and other locations, clinging to the hope she might have survived.
Six months later, they had to face the painful reality and filed a report of her death with their local town office.
“Natsuse was always smiling, loved cats and playing outside,” Chiyumi Yamane said.
Every year on her birthday in June, the family would count the age she would have reached and offer her favourite cream-filled cake at the family’s Buddhist altar.
Yet each anniversary of the disaster brought renewed fear that they might never see her again.
On September 30, nearly 15 years later, the family received a call from the Miyagi prefectural police: Natsuse’s remains had been found.
Yamane described the moment as “a miracle.”
The discovery came in February 2023 when a construction worker volunteering to clean local coastlines found remains in Minami-Sanriku, around 100km from Natsuse’s home in Yamada, Iwate prefecture.
Mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed the remains, which included part of a jawbone with teeth, belonged to Natsuse.
“The missing piece of our family has finally been put in place, and the clock that had stopped has started ticking again,” Yamane said.
“We can live together as four once again.”
