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A wife’s sad quest
Last year it was a joyful journey. She, her husband and son were at Yala with a group of friends. They had come all the way from Japan. This year too she made the trip in search of her husband, whom she believed was buried in the Deberawewa cemetery in Tissamaharama, to be present at the exhumation on December 21.

While giving instructions to his staff what to pack into a bus to take to Deberawewa, Dr. Perera says, “We pitch tents at the site, so we have to take everything, tables, stools, shovels….our tents become a field lab.”

When the tsunami struck, she escaped and went to look for her son. She found his body but could not find the body of her husband. In the exhumation in Kirinda, they found the body of a friend who was with her husband. That’s when they thought that he may be buried here. Up to that time all the Japanese who died in the tsunami in Yala had been accounted for except her husband, according to Dr. Perera.

The only two places the bodies from Yala had been taken to were Kirinda and Deberawewa. On Wednesday, with an order from the Magistrate, they exhumed the Deberawewa grave where 22 bodies were buried. The Japanese survivor came with her own team from her country including an odontologist because her husband had a unique dental record. The local team was headed by Dr. Perera and Dr. Ruwanpura. “The bodies were all over the place. They were not at the same depth, nor were they arranged in a proper manner,” says Dr. Perera. The first tests were not “very positive”.

The team has now taken all possible records for further investigation, carried out a sad little religious ceremony and reburied the bodies. “We have tagged them with permanent markers, wrapped them individually and gently placed them back, so that even at a future date we could check them out,” adds Dr. Perera.

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