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Imperial Couple Visits 2014 Hiroshima Rain Disaster Site

Imperial Couple Visits 2014 Hiroshima Rain Disaster Site

Emperor Naruhito (second right) and Empress Masako (far right) meet with survivors of the August 2014 sediment disaster at the Hiroshima City Torrential Rain Disaster Memorial Center in the city's Asaminami Ward on Friday. (Pool photo)
Emperor Naruhito (second right) and Empress Masako (far right) meet with survivors of the August 2014 sediment disaster at the Hiroshima City Torrential Rain Disaster Memorial Center in the city's Asaminami Ward on Friday. (Pool photo)

   Hiroshima, June 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako visited Friday a district in the western city of Hiroshima that was severely hit by a torrential rain-caused sediment disaster in August 2014 and learned to what extent reconstruction work has made progress there.
   At the Obarayama erosion control dam in the Yagi district of the city's Asaminami Ward, built in the wake of the disaster, the Imperial couple bowed down twice toward where houses were swept away by a mudslide after being briefed on the dam by a land ministry official.
   Then they moved to the Hiroshima City Torrential Rain Disaster Memorial Center, opened in 2023, and met with survivors of the disaster, which directly and indirectly killed 77 people.
   According to the municipal government, 52 lives were lost in the district. The previous Imperial couple, now the Emperor Emeritus and the Empress Emerita, visited there in December 2014.
   Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako are set to return to Tokyo on a special flight in the evening after making their first visit to Yano Orizuru-en, a nursing home for survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing in the city.

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AFP-JIJI PRESS NEWS JOURNAL


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