Okawa Elementary School
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was an educational institution in Ishinomaki City,
Miyagi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Miyagi Prefecture has a population of 2,305,596 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Miyagi Prefecture borders Iwate Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefecture to the nort ...
, Japan. The school was destroyed in the
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region, and lasted approximately six minutes ...
. 74 of its 108 students, who had been sheltering in the school on the instructions of their teachers rather than evacuating to higher ground, were killed as it ran up the nearby
Kitakami River The is the fourth largest river in Japan and the largest in the Tōhoku region. It is long and drains an area of . page 793 It flows through mostly rural areas of Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures. The source of the river is the Mount Nanashirug ...
. Only four students present at the tsunami's arrival to the school survived. Ten of its eleven teachers also died. It was found that the school was unprepared for such an event, and that the scale of the tsunami had not been realized until it was too late. In 2014, the families of 23 of the children who died sued Ishinomaki City and Miyagi Prefecture for compensation. In October 2016, they were awarded compensation of ¥1.4 billion (
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
12.8 million).


References

{{2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Ishinomaki 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami 1873 establishments in Japan Schools in Miyagi Prefecture Educational institutions established in 1873 Buildings damaged by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami