Rescuers expanded their search for people missing and stranded in flooding and landslides, as evacuation orders or advisories remain in effect for 4.3 million people in 23 prefectures from central to southwestern Japan. Over 30,000 people were staying at evacuation centers as of 3 p.m. Sunday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

 

Many people are also believed to be stranded in their homes due to a lack of access roads because of flooding. As damage in affected areas is unfolding, the number of casualties is expected to rise as many landslides were not immediately confirmed by local authorities.

The Meteorological Agency issued emergency warnings for heavy rains in Ehime and Kochi prefectures early Sunday, while Gifu Prefecture also remains on alert.

In Okayama Prefecture, one of the hardest-hit areas, more than 1,000 people trapped on the roofs of buildings submerged by floods following the bursting of three dikes on nearby Oda River were rescued by boats or helicopters.

In the Mabicho district, about 1,200 hectares, or one third of the district, was submerged. About 4,600 homes were inundated in the area.

The land ministry plans to mobilize around 20 pump trucks around the clock to drain the inundated area but it is likely to take about two weeks to complete the drainage operation.

Since the downpour began Thursday, when the weather agency forecast record amounts of rain through Sunday, 37 people have died in Hiroshima, 20 in Ehime and 10 in Okayama. The 14 other casualties were from Yamaguchi, Kyoto, Gifu, Shiga, Hyogo, Kochi and Fukuoka prefectures.

At a meeting of an emergency center the government set up Sunday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for all-out efforts for search and rescue.”Rescue efforts are a battle with time,”Abe told reporters. “The rescue teams are doing their utmost.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said 54,000 personnel from the police, fire departments, the Self-Defense Forces and the Japan Coast Guard have been mobilized for rescue work.

Suga said the whereabouts of 92 people, mostly in southern parts of Hiroshima Prefecture, are unknown.

More than 100 reports of casualties had been received, such as cars being swept away, he said. Some 40 helicopters have been flying rescue missions. The weather agency said three hours of rainfall in one area in Kochi Prefecture reached an accumulated 26.3 centimeters (10.4 inches), the highest since such records started in 1976.

The assessment of casualties has been difficult because of the huge area affected by the rainfall, flooding and landslides. Authorities warned landslides could strike even after rain subsides as the calamity shaped up to be potentially the worst in decades.

A residential area in Okayama Prefecture was covered with muddy water that was spreading like a huge lake. Some people fled to rooftops and balconies and waved furiously at hovering rescue helicopters. Military paddle boats were also being used to take people to dry land.

Officials in the prefecture said three people had died, six others were missing and seven were injured, one of them seriously. Six homes were destroyed, and nearly 500 were flooded. Evacuation orders or advisories were issued to more than 910,000 people, the prefecture said in a statement.

Several people were killed in a landslide in Hiroshima and more bodies were retrieved from collapsed housing in the ancient capital of Kyoto, both areas where the rainfall was heavy in the past few days.

In the town of Mihara, in southern Hiroshima Prefecture, a temporary let-up in rain laid bare the devastation wrought by the downpours.

Roads were transformed into muddy flowing rivers, with dirt piled up on either side and stranded cars barely withstanding the current flowing around their wheels.

“The area became an ocean,” said 82-year-old Nobue Kakumoto, a longtime resident. “I’m worried because I have no idea how long it will stay like this.”

Work crews could be seen elsewhere trying to clear multiple small landslides that coated roads in mud, rendering them virtually impassable.

“We are carrying out rescue operations around the clock,” said Yoshihide Fujitani, a disaster management official in Hiroshima Prefecture.

“We are also looking after evacuees and restoring lifeline infrastructure like water and gas,” he added. “We are doing our best.”

In Ehime Prefecture, a woman was found dead on the second floor of a home that had been buried in a landslide. Also in Ehime, two elementary schoolgirls and their mother who got sucked into a mudslide were pulled out, but they could not be revived.

People have also taken to social media to plead for help.

“Water came to the middle of the second floor,” a woman in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, wrote, posting a picture of her room half swamped by flooding.

“The kids could not climb up to the rooftop,” she said. “My body temperature has lowered. Rescue us quickly. Help us.”

The disaster is the deadliest rain-related crisis in Japan since 2014, when at least 74 people were killed in landslides caused by torrential downpours in Hiroshima Prefecture.

Mabicho, a district in the city of Kurashiki, was one of the hardest-hit areas in western Japan. With the sun now beating down on the destruction, road access to many parts of the area became possible Tuesday — a development expected to aid the delivery of water, food and emergency supplies.

 

Rescue workers — including Self-Defense Force personnel and local government authorities who were coordinating rescue and cleanup activities — arrived to find a very dusty landscape Tuesday afternoon, their vehicles making slow progress through roads caked with dried and drying mud in and around Mabicho.

Here and there, in the parking lots of local businesses and in surrounding fields, overturned vehicles that had been washed away in floodwaters rested upside down, waiting for tow trucks to take them away.

Neighbors were seen helping each other move muddy, broken and waterlogged furniture and household items to curb sides, in a calm and efficient manner.

An occasional breeze, carrying the smell of wet mud, stagnant water and rotting vegetation, nonetheless offered some respite from the blazing heat, as those who lost their homes recalled their ordeals.

“It was unbelievable,” said Teruo Sasai, whose house, along with nearly a dozen others in one part of Mabicho, had been flooded completely.

“The floodwaters were up over my house,probably reaching 4 or 5 meters, up past the roof all the way to the TV antenna. Thankfully, I was OK and nobody in this neighborhood was severely injured.”

“We’re still cleaning up. But I’d guess that, in order to recover, it’s going to take at least a year, and cost hundreds of millions of yen or more,” he added.

Along with residents, scores of local businesses in the Mabicho area have also flooded. Employees showed up at several to do what they could to help, despite grappling with damage to their own homes.

At one convenience store, nearly a dozen workers hauled out bags of plastic bottled drinks that were headed for a trash dump.

Employees at a home improvement center stood in front of the entrance, taking stock of the damage and attempting to estimate how long it would be before they could open their doors again.

Some were in no mood to talk to reporters, telling television crews that filming or taking photographs inside their damaged stores was not allowed. Others, however, were anxious to tell their stories.

“We lost all of our buses, trucks and taxis, but thankfully none of our employees,” said Keizo Fujiwara, who works at local transportation company. “Hopefully, we can be back in business in about six months.”

Getting water to residents remains a top priority.

At a local ward office, where workers were busy scraping mud off the entrance, water was being distributed to residents who had walked from their damaged homes — sometimes hundreds of meters away — in the heat and humidity, carrying plastic bottles.

One of most crucial tasks rescue workers initially faced was evacuating hospital patients after the main area hospital was flooded, requiring them to be moved elsewhere.

Mototaka Inaba, a doctor with the NPO Peace Winds Japan, said that there had been no evacuation plans prior to the flood.

“Ambulances and rescue vehicles could not initially get through as the roads were out,” he said.

“So we ended up evacuating people by boat and by helicopter. But Self-Defense Forces aren’t trained to deal with hospital patients,” he added. “So we assisted them in dealing with patients’ needs.”

The concern in Mabicho, as in neighboring Hiroshima Prefecture, remains fresh water and hygiene.

Inaba warned that heat exhaustion and heat stroke could become a problem as summer progresses and the temperature and humidity rise.

Inaba pointed out another lesson from the March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake, noting that “older people can suffer sickness if they don’t have proper oral care. So it’s very important that they have proper toothbrushes and toothpaste, and access to fresh water to brush their teeth.”

The executions followed the hanging of Shoko Asahara, the founder of the doomsday cult, and six former senior members of the group on July 6.

 

The six hung Thursday were Satoru Hashimoto, 51; Toru Toyoda, 50; Kenichi Hirose, 54; Yasuo Hayashi (later named Yasuo Koike), 60; Masato Yokoyama, 54; and Kazuaki Okazaki (later named Kazuaki Miyamae), 57. Hayashi and Okazaki changed their surnames after they were imprisoned.

The 13 high-level Aum members were sentenced to death for committing crimes including those involving the cult’s sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway system in 1995; another sarin attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in 1994; and the murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family in 1989.

It is rare for the government to execute this many death row inmates over a short period of time. Until now, the shortest time span between executions since November 1998, when records of executions were made public, was 47 days.

Media outlets have speculated that the Justice Ministry wanted to close the curtain on the shocking crimes and dramatic events before the end of the Heisei Era, which began in 1989. The era is set to end next year as Emperor Akihito plans to abdicate on April 30.

The cult had attracted many young people, including those who were highly educated at top-level universities. Some followers were believed to have become disillusioned with the materialism seen amid the euphoria of the bubble economy in the 1980s.

The indiscriminate murders by Aum, in particular those in the Tokyo subway attack, deeply shocked the nation and are still remembered as key events that damaged a long-held sense of security felt by many in postwar Japan.

“The majority of the public believe that there is no other option than to execute those who have committed brutal crimes,” said Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa during a news conference in Tokyo.

Polls have long shown a majority of Japanese people support capital punishment.

Kamikawa declined to reveal if any of those executed Thursday had been calling for the reopening of their trials, as has been reported by some media outlets.

Aum Shinrikyo split into three smaller religious groups after the arrest of Asahara. Local residents living around those groups’ facilities are worried, believing some of the followers still worship Asahara and the senior Aum members who were executed.

“The incidents that happened in the Heisei Era have finally ended. But for local residents, (their worries) won’t end unless (successor groups) are disbanded,” Hisashi Mizukami, 73, who heads a group of local citizens in Tokyo who live near the main office of Aleph, one of the successor groups, was quoted as saying by Kyodo News.

Human rights activists argue that those calling for retrial should not be executed unless all pending legal processes have been completed. The executions immediately drew condemnation from activists calling for the abolition of capital punishment.

Kamikawa said that the Justice Ministry does not believe that an execution should be delayed because an inmate is seeking a retrial.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has long called for the abolishment of the death penalty, arguing for lifetime imprisonment without parole instead. JFBA President Yutaro Kikuchi issued a statement on Thursday protesting Thursday’s execution.

“Criminal punishment should not be given just as retaliation but for something helpful in preventing the recurrence of a crime, such as achieving the rehabilitation (of a criminal) into society,” Kikuchi said.

Hiroka Shoji, East Asia researcher at Amnesty International, wrote on the group’s website, “This unprecedented execution spree, which has seen 13 people killed in a matter of weeks, does not leave Japanese society any safer. The hangings fail to address why people were drawn to a charismatic guru with dangerous ideas.”

Asahara founded the precursor of Aum Shinrikyo in 1986. Many members of the group were featured on TV shows numerous times in the 1990s to passionately defend the cult in public.

In March 1995, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin gas inside subway cars during Tokyo’s morning rush hour, killing 13 and injuring thousands. That was soon followed by a police raid and the arrest of Asahara at the cult’s facilities in Kamikuishiki, Yamanashi Prefecture. The murders highlighted the dangerous nature of the cult, some of whose members would be willing to kill if ordered to by Asahara.

All the trials related to members of the cult were finalized in January this year, causing the media and the public to speculate that the death sentences would be carried out shortly.