SENDAI (Kyodo) Corpses recovered from disaster areas three weeks after the March 11 megaquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region have become increasingly difficult to identify because of extensive damage, according to a coroner involved in the identification process.
In a letter depicting what he witnessed, the forensic scientist, who is helping police coroners and declined to be named, said identification work is lagging because more than 100 bodies are turning up daily in hardest-hit Miyagi Prefecture alone.
The damage was "as heavy as to arouse feelings of paralysis even in one such as myself, a forensic doctor familiar with dead bodies," he wrote, referring to some 100 bodies laid out at a school gymnasium where he worked one day.