Mothers at Sendai school receive the dead bodies of their children

It is two weeks since the Japanese tsunami struck but only now is Ookawa Elementary School giving up most of its dead.

Of its 108 pupils, 77 were buried, along with 10 teachers, when water surged over the top of their two-storey building and dumped tonnes of earth on the playground.

That was where the entire group was standing, having followed their well practised response to an earthquake, filing outside and waiting for the danger to pass.

There was a hill 50 yards away, where they would have been safe from a tsunami, but the teachers didn't think a wave could reach two miles inland.

So instead, for 45 minutes, they stood patiently as a 30ft wall of water was rushing up the nearby Kitakamigawa river, and across the rice paddies towards them.

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