Japanese pay tribute to victims of tsunami
Print Edition
JAPANESE gathered in Tokyo and along the country’s ravaged northeast coast to observe a moment’s silence at 2:46pm yesterday, exactly five years after a magnitude-9 earthquake struck offshore, triggering a devastating tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and sent reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant into meltdown.
Some teared up as they held hands or bowed their heads in prayer as sirens sounded on a chilly afternoon in northern Japan.
Japanese Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, all in formal wear, led a ceremony in Tokyo attended by officials and survivors.
“Many of the people affected by the disaster are aging, and I worry that some of them may be suffering alone in places where our eyes and attention don’t reach,” Akihito said. “It is important that all the people keep their hearts together so that not a single person still in difficulty is overlooked and they can return to normal life as soon as possible.”
Five years on, the most heavily damaged communities have yet to be rebuilt. About 180,000 people are still displaced, including those reluctant to return to homes in Fukushima.
Abe acknowledged that many people are still struggling, but said: “Reconstruction is steadily making progress, step by step, with housing being rebuilt and jobs regained.”
Yesterday, his Cabinet approved a 6.5 trillion yen
(US$57 billion) reconstruction plan to speed up housing for evacuees, and for health care, infrastructure, tourism and other projects.
At a Buddhist temple in the tsunami-ravaged city of Rikuzentakata, prayers were offered for the more than 1,700 residents who died, including about 200 whose bodies were never recovered.
“The best thing would be for things to go back as they were, but of course that’s not how the world works,” said 37-year-old Tadayuki Kumagai, who lost his parents. “Even if it’s impossible to go back to the way things were before the disaster, everyone hopes that living standards will at least come closer to what they were.”
Some people are still in temporary quarters, said Zuishu Sugawara, the temple’s chief monk. Forty-seven members of the temple are missing.
“In form, perhaps reconstruction might happen, but in terms of recovering from the scars of the heart,” he said, “I think there are some who might never heal.”
Earlier, a handful of people paid respects in Minamisanriku at the remains of the former disaster prevention center, where 43 workers died as waves engulfed the building.
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