Plenty of personal household safes have been turning up at Japanese police stations in the wake of that country’s recent devastation.
They haven’t yet only been recovered by save workers burrowing through rubble but have also been washed up ashore, and now law enforcement is running out of room to store them.
Up to now, these safes have been kept in the station parking lot, but with each station holding onto a couple of hundred at a time, authorities decided to try a more pro-active way of reuniting them with their owners beyond simply waiting for those people to show up.
Japanese police now hope to open these safes themselves hoping of discovering identifying information within with which to make their own inquiries.
Under Japanese law, you will find there’s little more than three weeks for missing items to be claimed by their owners.
After twenty-three days, finders can turn into keepers – or the government takes ownership.
Police hope to reunite catastrophe victims with their belongings prior to the finders/keepers-law can take effect.
Obviously, given the special circumstances involved, extensions to the usual deadline have been provided, but any haste that can be made would definitely be welcome by the victims.
The matter is especially important given the Japanese practice, found especially among their elderly, of saving money and other valuables not in banks but at home.
Such “wardrobe savings,” as the Japanese phrase goes, is very frequent but has become quite the catastrophe for disaster victims who have lost literally everything short of their lives and the clothing on their backs.
Hence, any effort expedited on behalf of such people would not simply be significantly appreciated but is absolutely essential to ensure even their very continued survival.
Luckily, of course, it is a result of the distinctive nature of Japan that valuables have been completed, along with the absence of looting and other rioting – a fact not lost on envious foreign observers.
