Okawa Elementary School

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Okawa Elementary School (Japanese: 大川小学校, Hepburn: Ōkawa Shōgakkō) was an educational institution in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The school was destroyed in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. 74 of its 108 students, who had remained at the school on the instructions of their teachers rather than evacuating to higher ground, were killed as the tsunami ran up the nearby Kitakami River. Only four of the students present when the tsunami struck the school survived. Ten of the school's eleven teachers also died. It was found that the school was unprepared for such an event, and that the scale of the tsunami had not been realized until it was too late. In 2014, the families of 23 of the children who died sued Ishinomaki City and Miyagi Prefecture for compensation. In October 2016, they were awarded compensation of ¥1.4 billion (US$12.8 million). The school was formally closed in 2018.