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Copycat Story? - Mother leaves touching text message for the child she died shielding during an earthquake

You may have seen this floating about your Facebook wall, Shared by your friends:

This is a true story of Mother’s Sacrifice during the Japan Earthquake.
After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.
He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and used his had through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement,” A child! There is a child! “
The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice for saving her son. When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.
The medical doctor came quickly to exam the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. There was a text message on the screen. It said,” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” This cell phone was passing around from one hand to another. Every body that read the message wept. ” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” Such is the mother’s love for her child!!


Well, according to Snopes.com, it may be a copycat story from another (unverified?) story from the May 2008 earthquake in China (go to page 2 of the article, which is in English). Here is an excerpt from the article Snopes.com mentions:


Watching the real-time report from the epicenter every day, I experienced feelings of shock, fear, anger, sadness and fragility. As the rescue work goes on day by day and true stories are brought to us from the epicenter, I also feel more than ever the feelings of hope, love and encouragement. Humans may be extremely fragile physically, but human spirit and love transcends any powerful natural forces. It transcends boundaries, races, space and time. I want to share with you the following true stories reported by the rescue workers from the epicenter. There were countless stories like this. These stories are symbolic of human spirit and love for each other. It is exactly this spirit and love that empowered the human race to overcome every disaster that happened since the beginning of time, to get us to where we are now, and to get us to a better place tomorrow. (The first story was translated by others.)?
"My loving baby, if you can survive, remember I will always love you." When the rescuers found her, she was already dead, crushed by the collapsed house. Through all the debris, people can see her posture: both knees down, upper body forward with hands holding her body, like praying to heaven. The rescuer pushed his hand in through the crevices to confirm her death. He again shouted and knocked the loose bricks with his tool; no response from inside. The rescue team moved on to the next collapsed building. The team leader felt strange about the posture of the dead lady. Despite the aftershock that had just started to attack the site, he went back, checked again and shouted to his team: "Come back, there is a baby alive under her body!" After a hard try, they carefully cleared the debris around the dead woman. Under her body was her well-wrapped baby, about 3 months old. Because of his mother's protection, he was not hurt at all. He was still sleeping when he was taken out. His quiet sleeping face calmed people nearby. The doctor came over to perform the routine check and found a cell phone tucked under the baby's blanket. On the screen of the cell phone was a message "My loving baby, if you can survive, please remember I always love you." Even the doctor, who is used to seeing life and death, cried.

I suppose there's the possibility that both stories are true. There's a saying that all writing is re-writing. Surely two people miles and years apart could have the same idea in the midst of a similar crisis.

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