Portrait of hope after the tidal wave of despair

By David Jones


Devastation: This picture of Akane Ito sitting crying in the ruins of the devastated city of Natori became one of the most iconic images from the Japanese tsunami


Among all the haunting photographs taken in the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami, one image became iconic - capturing the incredible scale of destruction and the resulting human misery in one unforgettable frame.

Published prominently in the Daily Mail and countless more newspapers around the world, it showed a young Japanese woman hunched in despair beside a ripped-up road, her tiny figure dwarfed by vast mounds of debris.

Rather strangely, she had removed her red rubber boots and placed them neatly beside her, but the fact that she sat barefooted amid the wreckage somehow made the picture more poignant.


The photographer who took the picture never spoke to the woman, nor even asked her name. So who was this tormented woman, with her fashionable clothes and hairstyle, and what was the story behind her anguish?

The image was so powerful that I determined to discover the answer while in Japan reporting on the earthquake and tsunami for this paper. But with tens of thousands living in homeless people’s shelters along the country’s north-east coastline, tracking her down seemed an impossible task.

However, when I had all but given up and was back in Britain, I finally found her.

I had pinned the picture to a town-hall door in Natori in northern Japan, alongside dozens of other appeals to the missing - and by sheer chance she had seen it and responded to my request to get in touch.

Her name is Akane Ito, she is a 28-year-old nightclub hostess, and her story is by turns tragic and uplifting – a testimony to the extraordinary spirit with which the Japanese are facing up to their trials.

Until the tsunami struck, Akane lived with her construction-worker boyfriend and his mother, in a two-storey wooden house in Yuriage, a fishing port nearly 200 miles north of Tokyo which was populated by some 7,000 people.

Reunion: Against all the odds, Akane found two of her 13 dogs, labrador Mei and poodle Momo after the disaster


Akane has no children, but kept no fewer than 13 dogs - including six chihuahuas - which she loved dearly and regarded as her family.

‘On March 11, I was upstairs watching TV with my dogs, when suddenly I felt this mighty earthquake,’ she recalls. ‘There seemed to be no major damage, but we were just left without water, electricity and gas.

‘It meant that we had no radio or TV, so we hadn’t a clue that a huge tsunami was about to come racing in. We weren’t worried at all because a few years ago, when we had another big quake, the tidal wave was only about 10cm high.

‘My boyfriend was at work, but his mother and I decided to drive to the nearest shop to buy batteries and water. The puppies were a bit afraid, but we told them it was OK and thought they’d be perfectly safe until we got back.

‘But on the way home, about an hour after the earthquake, people were saying a massive tsunami was coming and warned us to flee.

‘We headed to the mountain, thinking that even if a huge wave came it couldn’t possibly be as high as the second floor, so the dogs would be fine.

‘The day after the tsunami, I tried to go back for them, but the town was still flooded and I couldn’t get through. I had no idea it had been completely destroyed until two days afterwards, when my boyfriend was able to drive us there.

‘When that photograph was taken, it was about 11am on March 13. I was sitting in front of what had been the entrance to my house, in total shock at the realisation that we had lost everything and our beloved dogs were gone.

Temporary home: The hostess is now housed in a shelter where there is a special section for homeless people with pets


Akane remained rooted in the same spot for an hour, sobbing at the devastation while her boyfriend searched in another part of the town for his grandmother - who was later found unharmed in her residential home.

Given that so many people had drowned, there seemed no hope for Akane’s dogs.

Yet she has refused to give up on her adored pets, and since taking refuge in a local cultural centre, she has spent every waking hour searching for them.

She has placed adverts on every available notice-board in the ruined town, appealed via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and traipses the streets for miles around asking people whether they have seen any strays wandering in the rubble.
Eventually, she was rewarded.

The first dog to be found alive was May, a six-year-old female Labrador. Bedraggled and forlorn, she was spotted by a family as they wandered through the ruins of Youriage, a mile from Akane’s home, in search of missing relatives.

Despite their own loss, they took the dog home and cared for her until they spotted on of Akane’s appeals.

‘I was overjoyed when they phoned me and said May was safe. It gave me the strength to keep looking for the others,’ she says.

Then, to her delight, she was reunited with a second dog: Momo, a big, brown, female poodle. Remarkably, this one was picked up four miles away in the town of Fukurobara.

A kindly woman had rubbed down her sodden coat, fed her, then deposited her at a pet-shop whose owner placed her description on Mixi – the Japanese equivalent of Facebook. This allowed Akane to track her down.

Akane has no idea how the pair survived the great black tide of detritus that engulfed the coastline where so many humans succumbed. However, she is utterly convinced that she will find the other 11 dogs alive, so her hunt goes on.

Momo and May now live with her in the homeless shelter - where a section is reserved for those with pets.

Though some disapprove of valuable emergency resources being devoted to animals when there is so much human suffering, Akane is adamant that it is only fair.

‘For me dogs and cats are exactly the same as a family,’ she says. ‘I’ve never had a child, so I don’t know what parents feel for their children, but they say they are more important than themselves.

‘I feel the same way about my dogs – and that is why I looked so desperate in that photograph.’

Just one question remained – why, with all that dangerous debris round, had she removed her red boots?

‘It was all such a daze that I just can’t remember. They weren’t even mine – I had borrowed them from a relative.’

At this, the woman - whose harrowing image will stand testimony to the horrors of the great tsunami - nuzzled her resilient dogs and broke into a smile.



source:dailymail

Japan's apocalypse now: Rescuers pick their way through a wasteland of bodies, wreckage and people washing in rivers

By Daily Mail Reporter


-70-year-old woman found alive in house that had been washed away by the tsunami
-Japan injects £60.8bn into money markets after Nikkei plunges by more than 10 per cent
-Bread, tinned goods and batteries growing scarce as Japanese panic buy amid nuclear crisis
-Fears for hundreds of Britons believed missing. FO expresses 'serious concern' for at least 50


Wiped out: Rescue workers are dwarfed by the scale of the rubble as they pick their way through the shattered city of Otsuchi


With millions of people without electricity, thousands missing and warnings of an imminent second earthquake, the task for Japanese authorities is too daunting to imagine.

Some 3,000 people have now been confirmed dead since last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami but officials believe the death toll could rise into the tens of thousands, with a further 2,000 bodies washing up on the shores of north-east Japan yesterday.

Bodies wrapped in blue tarpaulins were laid on military stretchers and lined up for collection while panic-buying has begun in Japan amid fears of a second quake and growing concern about nuclear leaks.

And tonight there were fresh fears over the possibility of a full-scale nuclear disaster as the operator of stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant said a fire has broken out again at its No. 4 reactor unit.

United in death: The bodies of victims at a village destroyed by the tsunami in Rikuzentakata (left) and the wreckage of Toyota Yaris at the port of Sendai

Firefighting: Ships try to extinguish a blaze at oil refinery tanks in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, which has been burning since Friday's earthquake and tsunami

Rescue: Japanese relief workers carry a man who survived being buried alive for five days in Ishimaki (left) and a truck dangles from a collapsed bridge in Ishinomaki, northern Japan

Precarious: A house perches on top of a bridge in Ishinomaki after being swept away by the tsunami


Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hajimi Motujuku says the blaze erupted early Wednesday in the outer housing of the reactor's containment vessel.

The bad news came as survivors continue to struggle to find food and water as supplies run low. There have been major power outages since the double disaster, many planned to preserve resources.

As the stock market plunges and the government warns it is receiving just a fraction of the emergency aid it needs, it is unclear how Japan can even begin to tackle the destruction.

The level of desolation is on an epic-scale with many towns completely destroyed. A shattered infrastructure makes it almost impossible to move heavy lifting equipment and rescue crews have struggled to reach the worst hit areas.

The death toll from last week's earthquake and tsunami jumped today as police confirmed the number killed had topped 3,300, although that grim news was overshadowed by a deepening nuclear crisis. Officials have said previously that at least 10,000 people may have died in Miyagi province alone.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that radiation had been released into the atmosphere after yet another explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, inside Number 2 reactor.

Eerie: Cars drive along one of the few passable roads in the devastated Minamisanriku where 10,000 people are feared dead

People carry the body of a victim through debris in Kesennuma, Miyagi, northern Japan

Squatting amid the ruins: A woman cooks for her family in front of their devastated house in Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture (left) while an older survivor swaddles herself in blankets and gloves at makeshift shelter at Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture


Explosions had already occurred in the Number 1 and Number 3 reactors. Number 4 reactor is also on fire and there are fears for those who have not yet made it outside the 12-mile exclusion zone.

Rescuers have pulled a 70-year-old woman from her the wreckage of her home , four days after it was demolished in the Japanese quake.

The rescue of the elderly Sai Abe and a younger man pulled from rubble elsewhere in the region were rare good news following Friday's disaster.

Mrs Abe's son said he had tried to save his mother but could not get her to flee her home in the port town of Otsuchi. His relief at her rescue, he said, was tempered by the fact that his father is still missing.

'I couldn't lift her up, and she couldn't escape because her legs are bad,' Hiromi Abe said. 'My feelings are complicated, because I haven't found my father.'

Ship out of water: A boat dumped in the street in Hishonomaki, Miyagi, after being swept inshore by the tsunami

Heart of the wasteland: Japanese survivors of Friday's earthquake and tsunami walk under umbrellas through the leveled city of Minamisanriku

Swept away: A house drifts in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after being hit by the tsunami (left) while people are forced to wash their clothes by a river at Otsuchi, northeastern Japan

Vanished: An astounding aerial view of the tsunami-devastated town of Rikuzentakata shows the full scale of the damage. Very little remains

Match stick city: Heavy machines crawl through the rubble in Rikuzentakata (left) while a rescue crew surveys the damage in Ofunato, northeastern Japan

Mrs Abe was suffering from hypothermia and sent to a hospital, but appeared to have no life-threatening injuries.

Another survivor, described as being in his 20s, was pulled from a building further down the coast in the city of Ishimaki after rescue workers heard him calling for help.

Conditions for those still alive in the rubble worsened as a cold front arrived today, further pushing down temperatures. Snow is forecast over the next few days
Millions of people spent a fourth night with little food, water or heating in near-freezing temperatures as they dealt with the loss of homes and loved ones. Asia's richest country has not seen such hardship since the Second World War.

Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the hardest-hit, said deliveries of supplies were only 10 per cent of what is needed. Body bags and coffins were running so short that the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.

Indonesian geologist Hery Harjono, who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami, said it would be ‘a miracle really if it turns out to be less than 10,000’ dead.

The 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people - but only 184,000 bodies were found.

The impact of the earthquake and tsunami dragged down stock markets. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average plunged for a second day today, nosediving more than 10 per cent to close at 8,605.15 while the broader Topix lost more than 8 per cent.

To reduce the damage, Japan's central bank made two cash injections totalling 8 trillion yen (£60.8 billion) into the money markets today.

Initial estimates put repair costs in the tens of billions of dollars, costs that are likely to add to a massive public debt which , at 200 per cent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialised nations.

The pulverised coast has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since Friday, the latest a 6.2 magnitude quake which was followed by a fresh tsunami scare yesterday.

As sirens wailed, soldiers abandoned their search operations and told people on the devastated shoreline to run to higher ground.

The warning turned out to be a false alarm.

‘It’s a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish,’ said Patrick Fuller, of the International Red Cross Federation.

‘The situation here is just beyond belief. Almost everything has been flattened.’

Pictures released by NASA shows the Japanese city of Ishinomaki (left) after the tsunami and in 2008 (right). Water is dark blue, plant-covered land is red, exposed earth is tan, and the city is silver.

Japan Red Cross president Tadateru Konoe added: ‘After my long career in the Red Cross where I have seen many disasters and catastrophes, this is the worst I have ever seen.’

The Japanese government and aid agencies are struggling to ferry food, water and medicines to survivors after panic-buying stripped shelves bare in the few shops left standing.

Far outside the disaster zone, stores are running out of necessities, raising government fears that hoarding may impede the delivery of emergency food aid to those who really need it.

‘The situation is hysterical,’ said Tomonao Matsuo, spokesman for instant noodle maker Nissin Foods, which donated a million items including its Cup Noodles for disaster relief. ‘People feel safer just by buying Cup Noodles.’

The company is trying to boost production, despite earthquake damage which closed down its facilities in Ibaraki prefecture until today.

The frenzied buying is compounding supply problems from damaged and congested roads, stalled factories, reduced train service and other disruptions caused by Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Japan's north-east coast and the major tsunami it generated.

Officials have been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis, with millions of people spending a fourth night without electricity, water, food or heat in near-freezing temperatures.

A ship is seen perched on top of a house in the tsunami devastated remains of Otsuchi, Iwate prefecture

Details of the scale of the disaster (left) while destroyed houses are seen in the river at a devastated area hit by earthquake and tsunami in Kesennuma (right)

Ghost town: A once thriving industrial town off the coast in notheast Japan that has now been decimated by the tsunami wave that washed over the region


Officials estimate that 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives.

The government has sent 120,000 blankets, 120,000 bottles of water and 29,000 gallons of petrol plus food to the affected areas.

The stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda following the 9.0 magnitude quake on Friday.

Almost 2million households are without power in the freezing north and about 1.4million have no running water while drivers are waiting in queues for five hours for rationed petrol.

Grim: The Japanese army search for bodies in Higashimatsushima City, in Miyagi, the state where up to 10,000 people may have died

Clean up: Police walk in file down a hillside today into a coastal town in northeast Japan that has been flattened by the tsunami wave


Experts are now warning a second huge quake - almost as powerful as the first - could hit the country, triggering another tsunami.

The director of the Australian Seismological Centre, Dr Kevin McCue, told the Sydney Morning Herald that there had been more than 100 smaller quakes since Friday, and a larger aftershock was likely.

'Normally they happen within days.

'The rule of thumb is that you would expect the main aftershock to be one magnitude smaller than the main shock, so you would be expecting a 7.9.

'That's a monster again in its own right that is capable of producing a tsunami and more damage.'

In a rare piece of good news, a 70-year-old woman has been found alive four days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in north-eastern Japan.

Osaka fire department spokesman Yuko Kotani said the woman was found inside her house which had been washed away by the tsunami in Iwate prefecture.

Her rescuers, from Osaka in western Japan, had been sent to the area for disaster relief.

Ms Kotani said the woman was conscious but suffering from hypothermia and was being treated in hospital. She would not give the woman's name.



Source:dailymail

2,000 bodies wash ashore on one stretch of coast as scientists warn Japan faces SECOND monster quake and tsunami

By Daily Mail Reporter


-Second 'monster' quake could measure have magnitude of 8
-Terrible tide of at least 2,000 bodies wash up on the coastline
-Crews fight to bring reactor at nuclear power plant under control
-Millions left without food and power and hospitals have no medicine

Devastating: A woman sobs on a road as she surveys the destroyed city of Natori in the region of Miyagi in northern Japan


Devastated Japan today faced the prospect of a second massive earthquake and tsunami even as millions of citizen struggled to come to terms with its biggest-ever natural disaster.

Over 2,000 bodies had been washed ashore on the country's decimated coastline - raising fears the death toll could be higher than previously thought.

While the official death toll stood at nearly 1,900, the discovery of the washed-up bodies and other reports of deaths suggest the true number is much higher. In Miyagi, the police chief has estimated 10,000 people could have been killed by the quake and tsunami alone.

Bird's eye view: A photograph of the devastation in Sendai taken from a U.S. military helicopter

Grim: The Panaese army search for bodies in Higashimatsushima City, in Miyagi, the state where up to 10,000 people may have died


Crematoriums were overflowing with the dead and rescue workers ran out of body bags as the nation faced the reality of its mounting crisis.

The bodies washed up had been found on the shoreline in Miyagi on the eastern coast of the country.

Millions were still without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures in the devastated north-east. An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 jolted the Tokyo area around 5am on Tuesday - 8pm on Monday in the UK.

Though Japanese officials have refused to speculate on the death toll, Indonesian geologist Hery Harjono, who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami, said it would be 'a miracle really if it turns out to be less than 10,000' dead.

Meanwhile, a third reactor at a nuclear power plant lost its cooling capacity and the fuel rods at another were at least briefly fully exposed, raising fears of a meltdown.

The stock market plunged over the likelihood of huge losses by Japanese industries including big names such as Toyota and Honda following the 9.0 magnitude quake on Friday.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the nation faced its worst crisis since World War II. Kan said last night in a television address that the nation's future will be decided by the choices made by each Japanese and urged all to join in their determination to rebuild the nation following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

People walk a road between the rubble of destroyed buildings in Minamisanriku town, Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan, three days after the earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 struck

Laid waste: Huge swathes of land were destroyed when the tsunami hit Sendai in Miyagi province, sweeping away everything in its path

Screening: A mother tries to talk to her daughter who had been isolated for signs of radiation after evacuating from the vicinity of Fukushima's nuclear plants (left). She then drops down to talk to the family dog

Waiting for rescue: Isolated survivors sit around a fire and await help in a makeshift camp near Ishinomaki, northern Japan

Experts are now warning a second huge quake - almost as powerful as the first - could hit the country, triggering another tsunami.

The director of the Australian Seismological Centre, Dr Kevin McCue, told the Sydney Morning Herald that there had been more than 100 smaller quakes since Friday, and a larger aftershock was likely.

'Normally they happen within days.
'The rule of thumb is that you would expect the main aftershock to be one magnitude smaller than the main shock, so you would be expecting a 7.9.

'That's a monster again in its own right that is capable of producing a tsunami and more damage.'

Another expert believes Friday's quake is the 'aftershock' of an earlier eruption two days before, in which a 7.2 magnitude explosion shook the Pacific sea floor near the northern Miyagi area.

John McCloskey, a geophysicist at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, told the journal Nature the quakes have 'probably also affected the stress field further south along the fault zone, critically increasing the earthquake risk in the Tokyo region'.

He added that the aftershocks 'may be as large as, or even stronger than, the quake that last month devastated Christchurch in New Zealand', the website Good reported.

That disaster, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, claimed more than 160 lives.

Japan is beginning to take stock of what the prime minister labelled its ‘most severe crisis since the Second World War’, when the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japanese police said 1,000 washed up bodies were found scattered today across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture.

Desperate: A 'help' sign is written on the ground of Ohara Primary School near a sea coast covered with the rubble in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture

Scale of the disaster: Rescuers, seen from the air, appear tiny when viewed against the backdrop of carnage and devastation. They were searching for victims of the tsunami in Noda village, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan


The discovery raised the official death toll to about 2,800, but the Miyagi police chief has said that more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone, which has a population of 2.3million.

In one town in a neighbouring prefecture, the crematorium was unable to handle the crush of bodies being brought in for funerals.

'We have already begun cremations, but we can only handle 18 bodies a day,' said Katsuhiko Abe. 'We are overwhelmed and are asking other cites to help us deal with bodies. We only have one crematorium in town.'

In Japan most people opt to cremate their dead, a process that, like burial, requires permission first from local authorities. But the government took the rare step today of waiving the paperwork to speed up funerals.

A Health Ministry spokesman said: 'The current situation is so extraordinary, and it is very likely that crematoriums are running beyond capacity.

Wrecked... Upturned cars litter the landscabem buildings have collapsed as Miyagi Prefecture lies in ruins

Wave of destruction: The ruined shoreline of Sendai (left) and cars burnt out by fires in the wake of the tsunami lined up nearby

Vast expanse: The process of clearing the wreckage has been slow despite 100,000 troops being deployed to help scour the debris


'This is an emergency measure. We want to help quake-hit people as much as we can.'

Friday's double tragedy has caused unimaginable deprivation. In many areas there is no running water, no power and four- to five-hour waits for petrol . People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.

'People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming,' said a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest hit.

He said authorities were receiving just 10 per cent of the food and other supplies they need. Body bags and coffins were running so short that the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.

Carnage: Tsunami has left a scene of devastation that will cost billions to repair

Evacuees, who fled from the vicinity of Fukushima nuclear power plant, rest at an evacuation center set in a gymnasium in Kawamata, Fukushima

U.S. and British search and rescue teams set up a base to bed in for the night in a gymnasium after arriving at the Setamai school in Sumita, northern Japan

100,000 troops are on the ground across Japan searching for bodies with the death toll expected to be in excess of 10,000 once all the bodies have been discovered


'We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don't have enough,' he said.

'We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It's just overwhelming.'

The coast has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since Friday, the latest one a 6.2 magnitude quake that was followed by a new tsunami scare today.

As sirens wailed, soldiers abandoned their search operations and told residents of the devastated shoreline in Soma, the worst hit town in Fukushima prefecture, to run to higher ground.

People line up to get kerosene in Hitachi in Ibaraki Prefecture (left) while an aerial picture shows the remnants of train tracks in Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture


Search parties arrived in Soma for the first time since Friday to dig out bodies.
Ambulances stood by and body bags were laid out in an area cleared of debris, as firefighters used hand picks and chain saws to clear a jumble of broken timber, plastic sheets, roofs, sludge, twisted cars, tangled powerlines and household goods.

Officials said one-third of the city of 38,000 people was flooded and thousands were missing.

Hundreds of Britons – many of them English language teachers – are among those who have not been traced to date.

Ghostly: The scene of devastation seen from the air. Vast areas have been completely wiped off the map by the tsunami

Reduced to matchsticks: A view of a vast area of tsunami devastated Shizugawa district in Minami Sanriku


Japanese officials have refused to speculate on how high the death toll could rise, but experts who dealt with the 2004 Asian tsunami offered a dire outlook.

'It's a miracle really, if it turns out to be less than 10,000,' said Hery Harjono, a senior geologist with the Indonesian Science Institute, who was closely involved with the aftermath of earlier disaster that killed 230,000 people - of which only 184,000 bodies were found.

He drew parallels between the two disasters - notably that many bodies in Japan may have been sucked out to sea or remain trapped beneath rubble as they did in Indonesia's hardest-hit Aceh province.

But he also stressed that Japan's infrastructure, high-level of preparedness and city planning to keep houses away from the shore could mitigate their losses.

Totally destroyed: The town of Minamisanriku town, Miyagi, where 10,000 people are missing


According to public broadcaster NHK, 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives. Another 24,000 people are stranded.

One reason for the loss of power is the damage several nuclear reactors in the area.

At one plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, three reactors have lost the ability to cool down.
Explosions have destroyed the containment buildings of the other two reactors.

More than 180,000 people have evacuated the area around the plants in recent days.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Seventh Fleet said it has moved its ships and aircraft away from an earthquake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination.

The fleet said today that the radiation was from a plume of smoke and steam released from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, which has been hit by two explosions since Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Chilling: The destruction caused by the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, right, caused similar


devastation. Left a survivor in Otsuchi, Iwate, looks through a family photo album as the country struggles to come to terms with the scale of the disaster

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles (160km) offshore when its instruments detected the radiation.

But the fleet said the dose of radiation was about the same as one month's normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment.

Tokyo Electric Power held off on imposing rolling blackouts planned for today, but called for people to try to limit electricity use.

Many regional train lines were suspended or operating on a limited schedule to help reduce the power load.

Japan's central bank injected 15 trillion yen (£114 billion) into money markets to stem worries about the world's third-largest economy.

Shares fell on the first business day after the disasters. The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average shed nearly 634 points, or 6.2%, to 9,620.49, extending losses from Friday. Escalating concerns over the fallout of the disaster triggered a plunge that hit all sectors.

Japan's economy has been ailing for 20 years, barely managing to eke out weak growth between slowdowns. It is saddled by a massive public debt that, at 200% of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialised nations.

Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami in the tens of billions of dollars - a huge blow for an already fragile economy that lost its place as the world's No. 2 to China last year.




Source:dailymail

The town that drowned: 10,000 still missing in port town hit by megaquake as 275 aftershocks hamper rescue efforts

By JO MACFARLANE

Before: A picture of the port town of Minamisanriku ahead of the devastating tsunami


10,000 people missing in Minamisanriku after double disaster

Official death toll hits 574, but many hundreds believed to be buried under rubble or washed away by waves

Explosion at nuclear power plant, but experts say reactor is not at risk

Number of people contaminated with radiation could reach 160

Region hit by hundreds of aftershocks, some up to 6.8-magnitude

Rescue operation begins but some areas still cut off by road damage and flood waters
70,000 people evacuated to shelters in Sendai

Force of quake shifts Japan 8ft to the East


Just 48 hours ago, it was a picturesque fishing town where tourists flocked to enjoy the coastal air and natural hot springs. But this horrifying picture shows all that remains of Minami Sanriku after it was destroyed by the tsunami that has wreaked devastation across Japan.

Last night, the official death toll from Friday’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tidal wave stood at 574, but more than 1,700 people are believed to have been buried in the rubble or washed away by waves.

Rescue efforts have been hampered by hundreds of aftershocks, and it is feared the final death count could rise sharply once a full picture of the catastrophe emerges. In Minami Sanriku alone, 10,000 people could have died – more than half of the city’s population.


Obliterated: Where there was once a thriving town, buildings are now covered with mud in Minamisanriku town, Miyagi after the tsunami drowned the entire town


Utter destruction: Stunned local, lucky enough to survive, survey the appalling damage left by Fridays tsunami reducing a once-thriving coastal town to a desolate landscape of broken wood and twisted metal


It only took a few minutes for the 30ft wave to wash the town away with terrifying force. The locals desperately tried to escape to higher ground. But most did not stand a chance.

It is hard to imagine any life remains among the debris. Where last week fishing boats bobbed in the harbour, it is now impossible to tell where the sea begins and the land ends.

One of the few buildings left standing is the town’s Shizugawa Hospital – the large white building to the centre left of this picture. But the rest of what was once the town centre is flooded with filthy sea water.

Other structures lie battered and smashed in piles of broken wood and twisted metal, but most are now little more than debris.

Just visible through the murky waters towards the bottom left of the photograph are the painted stripes of a zebra crossing.


Flooded: Soldiers brought in to help with the rescue operation walk across debris and mud in Minamisanriku


Surveying the damage: Soldiers walk along a road past an iron girder that has been uprooted from the ground and a fire that is still smoking in Minamisanriku


Scale of destruction: A tanker has been washed ashore by the massive wave in Kamaishi City


There are vague remnants of roads and the occasional outline of a flooded car, and it is just possible to see the half-submerged outline of the town’s athletics track towards the top left of the picture.

Minami Sanriku lies about 55 miles west of the earthquake’s epicentre and directly in the path of the subsequent tsunami.

Japan has experienced more than 275 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater since Friday's earthquake, further hampering rescue efforts.

Some have been as powerful as 6.8-magnitude, and it is feared that if an aftershock of a magnitude over 7 occurred it could cause another tsunami.


A pile of burnt out vehicles that were ready to be exported are piled in disarray at a port at Tokai village in Ibaraki prefecture


source: dailymail