By AYA HAMADA/ Staff Writer
September 28, 2020 at 17:11 JST
SHIIBA, Miyazaki Prefecture—Hideki Aioi gazed at the broken trees, piles of mud and the pieces of destroyed buildings, offered a prayer and made an agonizing decision.
He told the village mayor to halt the search and rescue operation for his wife, son and a Vietnamese technical trainee who have been missing since Typhoon No. 10 triggered a landslide three weeks ago.
“It is a gut-wrenching decision that we have to give up the search while the three people are yet to be found,” Terumitsu Shiiba, the mayor of Shiiba, Miyazaki Prefecture, said on Sept. 25. “But it is extremely difficult to continue the current effort.”
The landslide on the evening of Sept. 6 buried the Aioigumi construction company office, a residential building and a warehouse.
The body of Nguyen Huu Toan, 22, a technical trainee from Vietnam, was found downstream on the Tonegawa river, 3-km from the landslide site, under piled-up debris on Sept. 17.
Another intern, Tran Cong Long, in his 20s, Aioi’s wife, Katsuko, in her 60s, and their son, Yasutaka, in his 30s, remain missing.
Aioi, the company’s president, suffered a fractured sternum in the landslide. He left the hospital to join the search on Sept. 25 on an exit pass overlooking the disaster area.
“I needed to come at any cost,” he said, while giving instructions to employees operating heavy machinery. “I’ve wanted to come here and join the operation as soon as possible.”
The search and rescue operation involved more than 2,000 workers. But they have come up with no promising clues on the location of the three missing people.
Rainfall on Sept. 24 caused the Tonegawa river to swell and rush, adding to the difficulty of the work.
“I am eternally grateful for the cooperation by many,” Aioi said. “But these rescue workers have been under strain, and I had to draw in a line at some point.”
His construction company will take over the operation, keeping the village’s faint hopes alive.
“I must find them,” he said.
Aioi said the search will resume when the waters in rivers and dam lakes become less turbid.
It was the second time Aioi was allowed to leave the hospital. On Sept. 24, he attended Toan’s funeral in the village.
“He was cremated. I just wanted to be there,” Aioi said in a trembling voice.
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Hideki Aioi joins his hands in prayer during a Sept. 25 search and rescue operation for three people missing since Typhoon No. 10 earlier this month in Shiiba, Miyazaki Prefecture. (Aya Hamada)
