4-month-old-baby-girl.........Nearly a week after their home town was annihilated in a catastrophic tsunami, the 1,000-plus survivors of the small Japanese fishing town of Otsuchi are hanging by a thread.
With no water or electricity, and scant food, survivors keep each other company at one of three emergency shelters on the outskirts of what remains of the town. "You can't wash your hands or face," says 72-year-old Katsu Sawayama, seated in the middle of the high school gymnasium, the biggest of the shelters in a town where more than half the 17,000 residents are still missing.
About 850,000 households in the north were still without electricity in near-freezing weather, Tohuku Electric Power Co. said, while the government said at least 1.5 million households lacked running water.
Like tens of thousands of people along Japan's northeast coast, the Otsuchi survivors have nowhere else to go. Meals are barely enough to sustain them -- half a rice ball and a small bowl of miso soup is a luxury; a slice of bread might have to feed a family of three.
