Reunited with her son

The woman's name is Yuko Sugimoto. She is now 29 years old.When the photo was taken, around 7 a.m. on March 13, she was looking in the direction of her son Raito's kindergarten, which was partly submerged and surrounded by piles of debris. Nearly two days after the quake she had yet to find the four-year-old.

It wasn't until the next day that the couple heard that their son and other children had been rescued by the military from the roof of the kindergarten the morning after the tsunami.
She hugged him and checked his hands, his feet, every bit of his body. She even checked his smell, to be certain it really was him. Holding him tight, she said "Thank goodness, thank goodness," over and over

Yuko Sugimoto and her son Raito walk down the staircase of Ishinomaki Mizuho No.2 kindergarten where Raito survived the earthquake and tsunami last year by evacuating to the rooftop in Ishinomaki, northern Japan, on Feb. 22.