After the flood

John M. Glionna (Los Angeles Times): Reporting from Nakanosawa, Japan— They covered the body with a child's blanket, a fluffy blue-green cloak decorated with white lilies. Beneath the cloth was a man, maybe in his 40s, missing his right arm from the elbow, a final insult to one of the countless victims of this agricultural town's tsunami nightmare.

On a warm late-winter morning, four recovery workers bent low, slowly lifting the corpse in silent deference, before splashing through the muck and ooze of the rural rice field toward the road.

-eddie