![]() ![]() But the scale of loss here is beyond any policy response. In the span of a few years, Japan built new neighborhoods, parks and schools. The central government pledged to rebuild the region and has spent around 31 trillion yen ($286 billion) on reconstruction. The disasters also triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. The earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 20,000 people on a stretch of Japan’s Pacific coast more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Tokyo. They remain suspended, trapped in those frantic hours a decade ago. REUTERS/Issei Kato Previous Nextīut for others, the day will feel little different than any other date on a calendar. Massive walls built to withstand a future tsunami can obscure any view of the ocean in the hard-hit coastal towns. For many survivors, the day will be marked by quiet prayers and family visits to gravesites. The 10th anniversary of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami will be a nationally televised event, with dignitaries in black suits gathering at a theater in Tokyo, where they will bow their heads and mark the moment of the disaster. In scribbled letters on the back of calendars, she chided her husband for staying away, sometimes writing his imagined response encouraging her to go on without him. Even now she carries around a laminated schedule of her daughter’s kindergarten bus, as if to prove that her 6-year-old should still be alive.Ī wife never gave up hope that her husband would return to her. He surrounds himself with books on the disorder that isolated his younger son in his room, unable to flee even when his mother begged him to evacuate as the tsunami roared toward them.Ī mother is haunted still by the cries of stranded children, maybe even her own, calling out for help in the darkness. ![]() Ten years on, the living are still searching, their grief never subsiding.Ī father lives alone in a house at the end of a long driveway lined with cherry trees. Trucks and houses had been swept aside like children’s toys, leaving the living to comb through a wasteland of mud and debris for their dead. When the tide finally receded, the world had changed. Letter from Sachiko Kumagai to her husband after he was lost in the tsunami I’m worried you’ll kick up a fuss when you return and ask where I put your shoes, so I’ve left them by the door without polishing them. Migaku-san, I’ve left your dirty gloves and your holey shoes by the door. ![]()
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