Japan remembers devastating earthquake: ‘ten years later it’s still a lot of pain’

The tsunami was memorialized 10 years ago in Japan. The disaster began with a severe earthquake in the sea, causing a tsunami. Large parts of the country were affected. In Fukushima, where there is a large nuclear power plant, this led to a nuclear disaster.

“The word memorial refers to something from the past, but for many survivors, the disaster is still a thing of the day,” says NOS correspondent Kjeld Duits in the Dutch newspaper. Radio NOS 1 News. The bodies are still being found and 2,500 people are missing. “There is still a lot of pain, and a lot of heartbreak.”

Still emotionally heavy

The tsunami that followed the earthquake, which reached more than ten meters in height in some places, killed more than 18,000 people. The disaster area covered a coastal stretch of hundreds of kilometers. Entire cities and towns have been wiped out. The water came so quickly that not many people were able to escape. German: “Tsunami overtakes moving cars.”

Lots of people are still struggling very emotionally according to German. “There is a man in the disaster area who lost a member of his family before the disaster. He encountered such difficulty that he put an old telephone booth in his yard with an unplugged phone to speak to this relative. He opened his garden in Otsucho so that everyone could use this phone.”