Japan: Two years after tsunami, slow progress on cleanup

Tokyo: Today’s two-year anniversary of Japan’s devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe is highlighting the country’s continuing struggle to clean up radiation, rebuild lost communities and determine new energy and economic strategies. More than 300,000 people remain displaced and virtually no rebuilding has begun along the battered northeastern coast, where the tsunami swept away entire communities. [caption id=“attachment_655149” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  In 2011, a massive tsunami killed nearly 19,000 people in Japan.[/caption] Memorial services were to be held today in Tokyo and in barren towns along the northeastern coast to mark the moment, at 2:46 pm, when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake the strongest recorded in Japan’s history struck off the coast, unleashing a massive tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people. In the ravaged small fishing town of Miyako, sirens wailed as residents trundled to higher ground in a disaster drill. In some areas, searches for the 2,676 people still missing in the disaster continued, as workers poked through sand and debris along the coastline. A thin blanket of snow covered the ground in Kesennuma, where houses and fisheries once stood. Survivors live in temporary housing farther inland on higher ground, while others have decided to move away altogether. This morning, fishermen, who are trying to get the vital industry back on its feet, lined up rows of tuna and other fish for auction. “It’s scary (living here) when there is an earthquake. It’s scary, but I don’t plan to go anywhere else. I want to give my own very best, somehow, toward reconstruction of the city,” said 75-year-old Kenichi Oi, who had to refurbish his home, just a few hundred meters from the sea, but on higher ground, after the tsunami flooded its first floor. Throughout the disaster zone, the tens of thousands of survivors living in temporary housing are impatient to get resettled, a process that could take up to a decade, officials say. “What I really want is to once again have a ‘my home,’” said Migaku Suzuki, a 69-year-old farm worker in Rikuzentakata, who lost the house he had just finished building in the disaster. Suzuki also lost a son in the tsunami, which obliterated much of the city. Associated Press