SENDAI--A former teacher here is passing along lessons learned from high school students who died while not at their schools in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in hopes of saving lives in the future. 

Tatsuro Takahashi, 67, a former elementary school teacher, has been looking into how 87 students of public high schools in Miyagi Prefecture died that day. 

On March 11, 2011, graduation ceremonies had already been held for high school students.

Those in their first and second years at high schools were supposed to study at home because there were no classes as school staff had to handle tasks involving entrance exams.

Most students thus were not at their schools that day. They were spending their spring holidays in their hometowns, when the magnitude-9.0 quake struck the northeastern Tohoku region.

Educational institutes have not carried out their surveys on such victimized students, rendering it unclear how they passed away.

Hoping to share lessons, Takahashi delved into the last moments of these students. He requested the prefecture’s board of education to disclose relevant information and sent letters to schools for inquiries.

The results showed the number of killed and missing students by school. Far more details were provided on more than 60 of them.

Of that figure, 26, or 40 percent, experienced the temblor or were engulfed by tsunami while at home. Eight were fleeing to safety. Many reportedly returned home to help their grandparents and younger siblings flee. 

Takahashi, who is currently director of the Miyagi Kyoiku Bunka Kenkyu Center (Miyagi education and culture research center), analyzed the findings.

“Many lives might have been saved if high school students had started running earlier on their own while calling on others in local communities to flee at the same time,” he said. “Another challenge involves arranging the evacuation of elderly citizens and other family members.”

The largest number of victims were identified at a driving school in Yamamoto where a lawsuit was filed questioning the responsibility of the facility’s operator to ensure proper evacuation.

Ten of the 25 deceased trainees there were third-year students from high schools in Miyagi Prefecture. The tragedy raised a question over disaster preparedness at institutes other than conventional schools.

More high schoolers likewise died in other areas, including nine killed in the Okawa district of Ishinomaki and eight in Onagawa.

As children attend high schools from a range of areas, students of inland establishments perished around their residences along the coast in more than one instance. This indicates all school operators should consider how to prepare students to survive a tsunami.

Apparently, these lessons have yet to be shared thoroughly among educators at high schools. 

Whereas the prefectural board of education offers anti-disaster training programs for teachers and management personnel, topics mainly referred to are tragedies at the Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki and other locations where many fleeing children died while under the supervision of their schools.

Supplementary textbooks on disaster preparations reportedly make no mention of high schoolers who died in various locations. 

“I want high school students to learn that young people from the same generation lost their lives,” said Takahashi. “That would allow them to think, as their own problem, how to protect not only their own lives but their family members and residents in local communities in the event of an emergency.”

Students’ deaths were confirmed at 35 public high schools.

As far as Takahashi knows, only one of these, Ishinomaki-Nishi High School in Higashi-Matsushima, has set up a monument bearing the names of victims on its grounds to hand down the somber lesson to future generations.

During his visit to the school accompanied by its previous principal, Yukio Saito, Takahashi spotted the memorial that states “the memories of the earthquake disaster are destined to fade at some point in time” and that it is “feared that those memories will not be passed down, which will make people lower their guard against disasters.”

Takahashi's findings were presented at a symposium themed on children’s lives and education that was held Feb. 25 at the Forest Sendai convention hall in Sendai’s Aoba Ward.