The tsunami raced through the town at eight metres per second, the speed of a gold-medal sprinter. The wave’s height reached 15 metres, towering above even the highest pole-vault bars. Ships were heaved onto hills, and cars floated like boats. After the wave passed, a chaotic mountain of debris was all that was left of Kamaishi, Japan’s oldest steel-manufacturing town, in Iwate prefecture. It looked like the aftermath of the firebombing of Tokyo, or like Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs fell. Similar scenes can be found throughout the Tohoku region, along Japan’s northeastern Sanriku Coast. For example, in the quiet rural city of Rikuzentakata, with a population of 23,000, it is…
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on March 30, 2011. Filed under News.
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Posted by
on March 30, 2011. Filed under