Anniversaries: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

Memorial dome in Tokyo, dedicated to the people who died in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, 11 March 2011. Image Source: REUTERS/Issei Kato via Telegraph.

Today is the third anniversary of the Tōhoku earthquake off the course of Japan and subsequent nuclear accident. Around 19,000 people died. It was the worst earthquake in Japanese recorded history.

Some of the most horrific devastation happened in one town. 95 per cent of the resort community of Minamisanriku in Miyagi prefecture was destroyed. Two years after the disaster, people were still afraid to rebuild the site because more than 10,000 people died there. To date, it remains undeveloped, also in part because the coastline sank by three feet. The beachfront municipality became a ghost town. You can see the entire town being swallowed by the post-earthquake tsunami here. The harrowing video was recorded by people who watched the destruction from the surrounding hills. An even more alarming, closer view of the black, fast-moving water is here.

Miki Endo, heroine of the lost town of Minamisanriku. The photo shows her with her marriage registration, shortly before she died. Image Source: J's Photos.

Miki Endo, a 24-year-old public worker, heroically stayed in the town, calling on its emergency announcement system, warning the townspeople to run away. HuffPo:

The Japanese publication Mainichi Shimbun reported that Endo did not let go of her microphone even as the tsunami engulfed the city. ... One survivor, Taeza Haga, 61, heard Endo's repeated warning calls and ran to his car to head for higher ground above the village. He told Endo's grieving mother: "I heard the voice of your daughter the whole way."

The last 10 seconds of Endo's broadcast before she died are here. Her body was later recovered; the associated news report, here, shows the building in which she worked, completely gutted after the disaster; it also describes how her family and townspeople found her body.

A Youtuber who commented beneath one Minamisanriku video remarked: "I live less than 50 metres from the sea in a bay that would funnel any Pacific tsunami right onto the town. We have some dinky little hills at the back of town but nothing of any real height. I might move soon I think." Another wrote: "If that don't give you the fear of God nothing will." Below the jump, see other videos of the earthquake and tsunami as they occurred. 

Video Source: Youtube.

The earthquake in Sendai. Video Source: Youtube.

  View from Shinjuku Center Building in the Tohoku region. The buildings had been carefully engineered to withstand earthquakes, an example later studied in Japan and the United States. Video Source: Youtube.     Tokyo department store. Video Source: Youtube.

Tokyo, inside an apartment. Video Source: Youtube.

Coast Guard ship climbing the tsunami waves as they came in toward the Japanese mainland. Video Source: RT via Youtube.

Incoming wave, helicopter view. Video Source: RT via Youtube.

Water at Ryoishi village harbour. Video Source: Youtube.

Incoming water, shoreline. Video Source: Youtube.

The streets - Miyagi Prefecture (宮城) in the city of Kesennuma (気仙沼市). Video Source: Youtube.

The streets - filmed by a driver in his car. Video Source: Youtube.

The streets - pedestrians trying to outrun the water. Video Source: Youtube.

American coverage. Video Source: ABC News via Youtube.

Further American coverage. Video Source: ABC News via Youtube.

American coverage - warning of possible nuclear meltdown. Video Source: ABC News via Youtube.