Toshihito recalled hearing all sorts of things smashing against the car. The window cracked, and on the spur of the moment, he broke the glass with his bare hands. Grabbing the hand of Yuto, a first-year junior high school student, Toshihito managed to crawl out of the window.

“But then something, probably a tree, came crashing through, and I had to let go,” Toshihito said.

He said the voices of Yuto calling to him and his grandmother pleading for help gradually became distant.