In this aerial view from a drone, large swaths of land remain empty after the area that was once a thriving town was destroyed by the tsunami, in Rikuzentakata, Japan, on March 8, A truck drives past a roadside sign on March 8, in Namie, Japan. Radiation-contaminated soil is stored on March 9, , in Minamisoma, Japan. Mika Sato, 46, who lost her daughter Airi in the earthquake, reacts as she stands in front of a memorial monument built for Airi and her kindergarten classmates in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on March 1, Mika Sato shows a photo of her daughter Airi, taken in August with her smartphone, in Ishinomaki, on March 1, In this picture taken on February 27, , Reverend Akira Sato, wearing a protective suit, poses outside the empty Fukushima First Bible Baptist Church inside the exclusion zone in Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture—an area declared a no-go zone after the nuclear disaster.
Hisae Unuma wears a protective suit as she walks past an incinerator used to burn debris collected in the Fukushima cleanup, which was built in a rural village near Unuma's home where she lived before being evacuated, in a restricted zone in Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, on February 23, Unuma said she won't return even if the government scrapes the radioactive soil from her fields. Radiation levels around her house are around 20 times the background level in Tokyo, according to a dosimeter reading carried out by Reuters.
Only the removal of Fukushima's radioactive cores will make her feel safe, a task that will take decades to complete. A bamboo tree grows inside Hisae Unuma's collapsing home, where she lived before being evacuated in , near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, in a restricted zone in Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, on February 23, Unuma fled as the cooling system at Tokyo Electric Power Company's nuclear plant failed and its reactors began to melt down.
Her home withstood the earthquake a decade ago but is now close to collapsing after years of being battered by wind, rain, and snow. Hisae Unuma wears a protective suit as she prays at her family's graveyard near her home during a visit of her house, on the anniversary of her husband's passing in a restricted zone in Futaba on February 23, In this picture taken on February 26, , construction workers build a new seawall in the Taro district of Miyako, Iwate Prefecture.
A decade after the deadly waves unleashed by one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history, the lesson learned in many coastal towns was to build higher. Fumio Ito, the head of public relations at Minami Sanriku Hotel Kanyo, recounts his experience of the tsunami disaster to participants during the Kataribe, or storytelling, bus tours in Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, on March 6, Tanashio meeting house, which was damaged by the tsunami, is being dismantled on March 8, , in Namie, Japan.
A cow eats grass inside the "difficult-to-return" zone on March 8, , in Namie, Japan. An abandoned house is seen inside the "difficult-to-return" zone on March 8, , in Namie, Japan. Shoes sit inside an abandoned house on March 9, , in Futaba, Japan. Yoshihito Sasaki, 70, who lost his wife, Mikiko, and his younger son, Jinya, in the earthquake and tsunami, looks at photos of his family that were damaged in the disaster and recovered by volunteers at his home in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, on February 26, In this picture taken on February 26, , a boat is seen through a window in a seawall in Miyako, Miyagi Prefecture.
A woman from Ofunato, who lost her junior high-school classmates in the earthquake, calls her late friends inside Kaze-no-Denwa, a phone booth set up for people to speak with their deceased loved ones, at Bell Gardia Kujira-yama, ahead of the 10th anniversary of the disaster, in Otsuchi town, Iwate Prefecture, on February 28, Kazuyoshi Sasaki, 67, who lost his wife, Miwako, in the earthquake and tsunami, reacts as he calls his late wife inside Kazo-no-Denwa, a phone booth set up for people to call their deceased loved ones, in Otsuchi town, on February 27, Sasaki dialed his wife's cellphone number.
He explained to her how he had searched for her for days. When I came back to the house and looked up at the sky, there were thousands of stars, it was like looking at a jewel box," he added. Kazuyoshi Sasaki looks out over the former residential area that was devastated by the disaster, near the grave of his late wife Miwako, ahead of the 10th anniversary of the disaster, in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, on February 28, We want to hear what you think about this article.
Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters theatlantic. A Hindu festival in Bangladesh, snowfall in northern China, fighting in Yemen, a plane crash in Brazil, a gathering of pelicans in Israel, Bonfire Night in England, and much more. The first shock hit at a. A by mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy.
Zacharias, then a young U. The date was September 1, , and the event was the Great Kanto Earthquake, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. The initial jolt was followed a few minutes later by a foot-high tsunami. A series of towering waves swept away thousands of people. Then came fires, roaring through the wooden houses of Yokohama and Tokyo, the capital, burning everything—and everyone—in their path. And the quake may have emboldened right-wing forces at the very moment that the country was poised between military expansion and an embrace of Western democracy, only 18 years before Japan would enter World War II.
The 9. Nevertheless, there are parallels. Like the quake, this one unleashed secondary disasters: a tsunami that washed away dozens of villages; mudslides; fires; and damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that emitted radiation into the atmosphere and constituted the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in Fuel, food and water were hard to come by weeks after the earthquake, and the Japanese government acknowledged that it had been ill-prepared for a calamity on this scale.
Traditional figures offered words of solace: Crown Prince Hirohito 88 years ago; his son, Emperor Akihito, in Before the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, Japan was full of optimism.
Commodore Matthew Perry forced the shogun to open Japan to the West, Yokohama had grown into a cosmopolitan city of half a million. The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon.
Somerset Maugham and William Howard Taft, collapsed, crushing hundreds of guests and employees. Otis Manchester Poole, a year-old American manager of a trading firm, stepped out of his largely still-intact office near the Bund to face an indelible scene.
Soon, the entire city was ablaze. Meanwhile, a wall of water surged from the fault zone toward the coast of Honshu. Three hundred people died in Kamakura, the ancient capital, when a foot-high wave washed over the town. Kinney, a Tokyo-based editor for Trans-Pacific magazine. Vast portions of the hills facing the ocean had slid into the sea. Although the shock waves had weakened by the time they reached through the Kanto region to Tokyo, 17 miles north of Yokohama, many poorer neighborhoods built on unstable ground east of the Sumida River collapsed in seconds.
Then, as in Yokohama, fires spread, fueled by flimsy wooden houses and fanned by high winds. According to one police report, fires had broken out in 83 locations by Fifteen minutes later, they had spread to
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