The National Police Agency lists 2,520 victims of the 2011 earthquake-tsunami disaster as missing, and they cannot be added to the official death toll until their bodies are found and identified.

As the years pass by, fewer remains have been found. And the last positive identification of a body from the disaster was in 2021.

However, the Miyagi prefectural government is in possession of six unidentified bodies found at sea or off the coast of the prefecture.

There is a possibility that the bodies could be Indonesian crew members who were last seen being swept away by the tsunami. But efforts to match the remains with the four Indonesian men have only recently started.

That is because the Indonesian sailors are not listed on the NPA’s missing persons list.

The omissions were based on the wishes of the men’s families in Indonesia, who have refused to give up hope that their loved ones may turn up alive.

LOST AT SEA

On March 11, 2011, the 77-ton Daisan Kuni Maru, a tuna hauler based in Tsukumi, Oita Prefecture, was docked at Shiogama Port in Miyagi Prefecture to unload its catch.

At 2:46 p.m., as the crew was preparing for departure, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck offshore.

A wholesaler yelled at the crew members: “A tsunami is coming. Get out to sea now!”

The ship headed toward the tsunami, hoping to ride over the waves before they grew in height in the shallow water.

The Daisan Kuni Maru survived the first tsunami wave but was directly hit by the second one, which was more than 10 meters high.

The four Indonesians were lost at sea.

A rescue helicopter from the Japan Coast Guard arrived the next morning. The search continued, but the four were not found.

The sailors, aged between 27 and 30, were migrant workers from Indonesia. In fact, seven of the 10 crew members of the ship were Indonesian nationals.

A former senior official of the Miyagi prefectural police department explained why the four men were not placed on the NPA’s missing persons list.

Authorities made inquiries through the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo to the families of the four sailors, but the families said they would not file official missing persons reports, the former official said.

They apparently wanted to avoid taking any official step that could lead to the confirmation of the men’s deaths.

TRAGIC SCHEDULE CHANGE

One of the four crew members was Tony Setiawan, who was 30 at the time of the disaster.

Tony was the second of six children in a family living in a small village in Central Java, a five-hour train and car ride from the capital of Jakarta.

The family opened a store, which sells cigarettes, sweets and SIM cards for smartphones, in the village about 20 years ago with money sent from Tony.

Tony named the store, “NIEPHON (Nippon).”

His older brother and two younger brothers have been working in South Korea.

“Of all my siblings, Tony was the most family-oriented,” his younger sister, Feny, 42, said.

After graduating from a local fisheries high school in Indonesia, Tony responded to a recruitment call and became a technical intern in Oita Prefecture in 1999.

Halfway through his internship, Tony switched to a “maru-ship” program, which allowed him to board a Japanese ship as a foreign-flagged crew member.

According to his family, Tony was aboard the Daisan Kuni Maru when it arrived at Shiogama Port on March 10, 2011. He was supposed to fly directly back to Indonesia that day.

Back home, Tony had promised to marry a woman, and she was waiting for his return.

However, he postponed his scheduled flight by one day so that he could fly to Indonesia together with a friend. His family was informed of the change on the morning of March 11.

“I’ll call you again,” Tony said over the phone. “Mom and Dad don’t have to come pick me up.”

News about the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hitting northeastern Japan that afternoon spread around the world.

Worried, Tony’s younger siblings headed for the airport in Jakarta. But their brother did not show up.

Two days later, the names of the four Daisan Kuni Maru crew members swept away by the tsunami were reported in the local news.

After that, the family was informed by the embassy in Tokyo that if Tony’s body was not found after three months, he would be presumed dead.

The family took steps to obtain insurance money and other benefits.

The circumstances are unclear, but during this process, the family decided not to file a missing persons report with Japanese police.

No funeral has been held for Tony, nor has a gravesite been arranged, “because we would feel bad for him if Tony came back suddenly,” said his 66-year-old mother, Nur Hidayati.

Feny said she saw Tony in a recent dream and he said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get in touch with you.”

Tony’s youngest sister, Wiwi, 34, echoed the sentiment of the family, saying, “As long as his body hasn’t been found, I have the feeling that he is out there somewhere.”

SKETCH RESEMBLES PHOTO

The six unidentified bodies in the possession of the Miyagi Prefecture include four that were found at sea.

Two of them were discovered near the location where the Daisan Kuni Maru was hit by the tsunami.

The first basement floor of the Miyagi prefectural police headquarters in Sendai has a room lined with files containing information on the missing victims of the 2011 disaster.

The department’s five-member missing and unidentified persons investigation team has been working steadily to identify bodies found by checking them against the NPA’s missing persons list. They have used DNA testing and other methods to determine who they are.

Since November 2011, when the team was established, about 560 bodies have been identified. The last positive identification was in 2021.

The team had not checked if the bodies could be the four Indonesian sailors because they were never listed as missing by the NPA.

Informed of the circumstances, the team sought clues that might connect the Indonesian men to the six unidentified bodies.

Kyoju Nakamura, 45, the team leader and coroner, said photos of the Indonesian sailors and information about their families could help in the identification process, even though the six bodies have been reduced to skeletal remains.

“This could be the most promising information we have had in a long time, as we have been stuck in limbo,” he said.

While in Indonesia, I received a picture of Tony from his family.

I also met the families of two other missing crew members in Central Java.

Rudi Hartono was 30 years old at the time of the disaster. His sister could not stop crying as we talked about him.

She found a photo of Rudi and allowed me to take a close-up copy of it.

Unfortunately, the third family had lost all belongings, including photos, in a flood seven years earlier.

With the families’ permission, I provided the photos and other information to the Miyagi prefectural police.

The police had sketched a face based on the skull features of a body labeled “B425” that was found off the coast of Shiogama.

The sketch looked a lot like the photo of Tony.

Police officials said they would like to collect DNA from the Indonesian crew members’ families to check for familial matches.

“As long as there are families waiting, we will investigate as long as there is a possibility,” Nakamura said.

For 14 years, Tony’s mother, Nur, has been clinging to the fading hope that her son is alive.

Would providing DNA samples push her and the other families toward a realistic but unwanted conclusion?

“Even if they are just bones, if they are my son, I want him to come home,” Nur said.

(This article was written by Hideaki Ishibashi, senior staff writer, and Ikuko Abe.)