IT HAS been, tragically, a story of unremitting gloom and doom.
The awful events of Japan have dominated the news headlines ever since the massive earthquake and tsunami showed Mother Nature’s deadly forces at work.
But, for one fleeting moment, there was something to lift the black cloud.Rescuers working in the towns devastated by the disaster found a teenage boy and his grandmother alive.
As the official death toll rose to 8,450, with more than 12,900 reported missing, it was wonderful news amid the despair.
The boy’s cries for help led police to rescue him and his 80-year-old grandmother from their wrecked house nine days after earthquake struck.
Beyond the disaster area, uncertainty grew over the safety of food and water.
But a Holmfirth woman, Sheila Shimizu, who has made her life in Tokyo for the past 32 years, believes there is light at the end of the tunnel and believes the Japanese people can overcome even something of this dreadful magnitude.
The weekend rescue gives us all that little bit of hope.
