Clutching a handkerchief tightly in her hand, Mika Sato nodded silently and tearfully to the others who lost their children in the 2011 tsunami when the Sendai District Court handed down its ruling Tuesday holding a kindergarten responsible for the deaths.

Sato, 38, was among the parents who sued the Hiyori kindergarten in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, over the deaths of their children, lost when their school bus was swallowed by the March 11 tsunami, then engulfed in flames when gas leaking from a nearby service station blew up.

Tragically, the bus had been dispatched from the school, which stands on high ground, to deliver the children to their homes on the coast.