Japan marks disastrous tsunami five years on
Japan has marked the fifth year since a tsunami caused by an earthquake killed thousands of people and caused the world’s worst nuclear disaster in nearly three decades.
Bells rang out in the capital, Tokyo, at the exact moment the quake hit the country, with people bowing their heads in silence around the nation.
All the trains on Tokyo’s underground also paused at the aforementioned time.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Emperor Akihito attended a memorial ceremony in the capital.
Abe said “these five years must have been days of hardship and pain” for all those affected by the disaster. He vowed to “secure an ample budget to launch support measures to help disaster-hit areas stand on their feet again.”
Protesters denouncing the use of nuclear energy also attended the memorial.
The nine-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s northeast on March 11, 2011, creating a vast water surge. The tsunami sent huge waves along a vast swathe of coastline. Some 18,000 were killed or went missing.
The tsunami also crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The cooling systems of the plant’s reactors were knocked out, leading to meltdowns and the release of radioactive radiation into the air, soil and sea.
The incident, considered the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, also led to the evacuation of 160,000 people from areas near the power plant.
Five years on, some areas remain no-go zones due to high radiation levels, and most of the people who evacuated have not yet been able to return to their homes.
“The reality is that we still feel the scars here, and there are still many struggling to restart their lives,” said Yashichi Yanashita, a retired city hall official.
The Japanese government and utility firms have been pushing to get reactors – all of which had been shut off following the crisis – back in operation, although many people in the country reportedly oppose the return to nuclear energy following the 2011 crisis.
The government, however, restarted two reactors in Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima in August and October 2015.
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