Japan's local gov'ts ordered to pay damages over 2011 tsunami deaths of school children

The city of Ishinomaki and Miyagi Prefecture in northeast Japan have been ordered by a court to pay damages of 1.4 billion yen (13.43 million U.S. dollars) to the families of 23 elementary school children who were tragically killed by the devastating tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in 2011.

The plaintiffs in the case of the children who attended the Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, initially sought damages from the local government of 100 million yen in compensation for the deaths of each child.

In the suit filed with the Sendai District Court against the city and prefecture for negligence, the plaintiffs argued that the school should have predicted the high possibility of a tsunami being triggered by the magnitude-9 earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011, and swiftly evacuated the children to safety.

Investigations into the case revealed however that rather than an immediate evacuation, the children were told to remain in the school grounds and, specifically, on the playground, located just 4 km from the coast of the Pacific Ocean, for as long as 45 minutes, before a decision was made to vacate the school for higher ground.

The ensuing tsunami, tore its way through the city of Ishinomaki, with only four students and a single teacher surviving, of 87 who were trying to evacuate. Of a roster of 108 students, 74 were killed along with 10 of the school's 13 teachers and other school staff in the disaster.

The suit against the city and prefecture was initially filed in March 2014 and claimed that negligence was shown by the school in its inability to sufficiently gather enough disaster and emergency-related information to safeguard the children, with the plaintiffs claiming the tragedy was avoidable.

The defendants, for their part, had protested that they could not have predicted the size of the tsunami, which was more than 10 meters high, and argued that the school was outside of a high risk area for tsunamis.

The number of lives lost in the wake of the tsunami engulfing the children at the Okawa Elementary School, ranks the disaster as one of the most single fatal incidents at a facility, following the 2011 quake and tsunami catastrophe, and a number of other suits have been filed against facilities and institutions in other hard-hit areas by the victims' families claiming similar negligence.

In September 2013, in an unprecedented case, a court ruled that a kindergarten in Miyagi Prefecture and its headmaster were culpable in the deaths of four children who were killed by the tsunami.

The Sendai District court ordered the privately run Hiyori kindergarten in Ishinomaki to pay damages of 177 million yen to the families of four of the children who died after their school bus was engulfed by the killer tsunami.

The ruling marked the first time in Japan a civil lawsuit has been accepted by a court in favor of plaintiffs who have filed suits against schools, companies and institutions with managerial responsibilities.

As with Wednesday's ruling and the landmark case in 2013, other cases filed are expected to see more facilities, individuals and local municipalities held culpable for negligence following the 2011 disasters, with the cases being settled in both lower or higher courts in Japan. Endit