Tsunami blasts linger in Japan a decade later

TOKYO (AP) – The images still hold power to shock.

Dazed survivors walk under large sea trucks parked amidst vast rubble and wrought iron that was once a busy city center, and the ships tossed towards them like children’s toys. Grieving survivors pick through the flat rubble where their homes used to be. Abandoned farms stand in the shadow of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, where a catastrophic collapse is still echoing.

These arrests were captured by The Associated Press in 2011 after a massive wall of water leveled part of Japan’s northeast coast, washing away cars, homes, office buildings and thousands of people.

Ten years later, AP journalists returned to document the communities shaken by what is simply referred to here as the earthquake in Great East Japan. The urge to rebuild in a country plagued by millennial disasters – volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, war and famine – is strong, and there are areas where there is little or no trace of the devastation of 2011. .

But this triple disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan – earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tsunami – is unlike anything Japan has faced before, and the challenges of returning to what was normal a decade ago were enormous. Half a million were forced out of their homes; tens of thousands did not return, emptying the towns that had already struggled to leave their young people to Tokyo and the other major cities. Fear of radiation continues to linger. The incompetence of the government, small quarrels and bureaucratic wrestling delayed the building efforts.

Despite the setbacks and unequal progress, the Tohoku of 2021 is proof of a collective willpower – nationally, locally and personally. Look closely, however, and you will see that even the most breathtaking transformations carry the remnants of what happened in 2011, the scars of the deep wound in the region’s psyche.

These AP images allow and now a fundamental question arises: how do you notice change after major trauma?

In a way, it’s the simplest thing in the world to describe. The removal of tons of rubbish here, the absence of tankers falling over there. The repaired roads where there were previously cracked and cast piles of asphalt. The shiny new buildings that now rise above what have been cleaned.

But the strength of this physical change also carries the idea of ​​something much less clear, something about the people who live in these places. Their resilience, their stoicism, their sadness and anger and stubborn refusal to bow to forces beyond their control, whether natural or bureaucratic.

All of this, and more, occurs in these powerful scenes from before and after, then and now.

The photos tell the story – of great change and the people who made it happen.