Japan won't declare someone missing unless they have been reported missing

[^_^ 5,021]

The number of dead and missing after Japan's twin earthquake and tsunami stood late Wednesday, officially, at 12,920.

In reality, Japanese widely agree, the toll of last week's disaster is likely much higher. In Miyagi, a coastal prefecture that bore some of the tsunami's worst destruction, officials estimate the toll there alone will be in the tens of thousands.

Accounting for the gap between the official and true count are places like Otsuchi, until March 11 a town of about 15,000 people on Japan's northeastern coast.

Japan won't declare someone missing unless they have been reported missing. In Otsuchi, where Friday's tsunami is believed to have swept away entire neighborhoods and families, no one is left in many cases to report names. About 5,000 people were evacuated. Otuchi's dead number 221, officially. Seven are declared missing. That leaves more than 9,000 uncounted.

The effect is repeated in towns up and down the coast in the prefectures including Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima. Survivors in Minamisanriku, a town in Miyagi washed nearly clean of its houses, believe about half of its 17,000 residents are gone. Press reports suggest roughly half of the 23,000 people of Rikuzentakata, in Iwate, are unaccounted for. In Onagawa, a seaside town where 106 residents are officially counted dead and 125 officially missing, residents believe about half of the pre-tsunami population of 10,000 will ultimately be counted as lost.

But the official toll rises one by one, as it did Wednesday in Onagawa.

As for the missing and uncounted, the town was unwillling to consider them dead, said Toshiaki Yaginuma, Onagawa's city planning official. Since all forms of communication are down except one satellite phone in the central offices, the missing may not be able to alert townspeople that they are safe.

Japanese officials say they have always handled disaster tolls this way, with painstakingly precise tallies rather than grand estimates that are honed later.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703899704576204953044390300.html

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Sounds like the kitty in the box paradox. Are they really dead until they are discovered, or just in between states, neither alive or dead, or both at the same time? I love quantum theory.

ETA: It is still a tragedy, despite my musings.

Edited March 17, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Well it's a system so if they are consistent I would assume it will eventually sort itself out. What a mess though! Very sad.

[mawilson 2,133]

Japan won't declare someone missing unless they have been reported missing

How would the authorities know that a person is missing unless someone reports them missing?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

How would the authorities know that a person is missing unless someone reports them missing?

Headcount? Door-to-door searches?

[^_^ 5,021]

Headcount? Door-to-door searches?

Just because someone's not home doesn't mean they're missing. The might be visiting Tokyo Disney.

BTW I overheard a crazed store manager at a Brookstone near me telling one of his employees that Kim Jong Il caused this earthquake with an undersea nuclear explosion.

[Darnell 8,479]

*** nothing political or religious in the thread, moving to Off Topic forum ***

[Ban Hammer 14,353]

How would the authorities know that a person is missing unless someone reports them missing?

i guess if one has no living relatives and is homeless, no one will miss them.

[thongd4me 69]

I don't know how the relief efforts are organized there, but maybe they don't depend on a head count.

Usually in the US, the local authorities want to estimate as large as they can, or risk not getting federal assistance.

I don't think this article means to say that the actual dead that include entire family units won't ultimately be counted,

but that just initially they are not counted until the local records are reviewed.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Headcount? Door-to-door searches?

How? The homes (and doors) aren't there anymore...

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

How? The homes (and doors) aren't there anymore...

Then I guess those folks would be "missing".

[Staashi 371]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least 50 to 100k dead. The various towns and areas along the coast were so densely packed with humanity that I can't imagine there only being 15k dead. The policy they have is common. Here in FL, we typically don't declare someone as dead until they have been identified. Supposedly, (conspiracy theory here) there were a few thousand illegal farmworkers who were killed during Hurricane Andrew. No one could identify them so they were never declared as part of the official death toll.