It seems like things are getting worse in Japan every time you check the news, but yesterday one tiny ray of sunshine came through the tragedy in the shape of a little girl in a pink sweater. The soldiers who found her describe her as a “tiny miracle.” The little voice crying amongst the rubble and destruction that they thought couldn’t be real until they found the four month old infant, wrapped in her fuzzy pink jacket and apparently unharmed despite the fact that it had been nearly three days since she’d been swept out of the arms of her family in the massive tsunami waves that destroyed her village.
The members of the Japanese Defense Force who found the child were part of the search team that had discovered nearly 2,000 bodies, almost all of them drowned, before they stumbled on the little girl. They wrapped her in a blanket and crowded around, wondering at the little survivor. Her frantic father was reunited with his daughter only moments before the second tsunami warning was issued on Monday. Thankfully, it was a false alarm and now the reunited family is facing the task of rebuilding their lives. A task that is a little less grim thanks to their daughter’s miraculous survival.
There is little information available about the child, and some conflicting reports even suggest that she was with her father at least part of the time since the tsunami, but the details don’t matter to the stricken people of Japan. They needed a symbol and this little girl has given it to them.
“Her discovery has put a new energy into the search,” a civil defence official told The U.K. Daily Mail. “We will listen, look and dig with even more diligence after this.”
