Summary

“The Last Hour of the Old World” describes Okawa Primary School pupil Tetsuya Tadano’s escape from the tsunami. As one of the sole survivors of the event, he shares how senior teacher Toshiya Ishizaka and Junji Endo failed to protect the students from disaster. Ishizaka had failed to renew the emergency manual in the school, leaving it vague and failing to specify where students should be evacuated to in case of an earthquake or tsunami. As a result, all the students, after the initial shock waves on March 11th, were gathered in the playground waiting. Some were taken home by their parents, but teachers refused to move the other students to higher ground or anywhere at all, thinking they would be safe. Toshinobu Oikawa, a working man in nearby Kamaya, describes how...