A court ordered the city of Ishinomaki and Miyagi Prefecture on Wednesday to pay roughly ¥1.4 billion ($13.4 million) in damages to the families of 23 elementary school students killed in the tsunami that followed a major earthquake in northeastern Japan in 2011, judging the city-run school failed to evacuate the children appropriately.
In a suit filed with the Sendai District Court, plaintiffs demanded that the city and prefectural governments jointly pay ¥100 million in compensation for each child killed, arguing Okawa Elementary School should have foreseen the possibility of a tsunami and evacuated the children to a nearby mountain or other high ground instead of an area near a river.
"The school could have expected the arrival of a massive tsunami when they heard the city vehicles urging evacuation," said presiding Judge Kenji Takamiya in awarding the compensation to all the plaintiffs.