A Land Awash in Despair

The municipal sports center is one of 13 places in Onagawa being used as an evacuation center.

There is very little privacy inside the sports center.

Hirayama Takeshi finds it difficult to contemplate moving away from the community where he has lived for so many years.

Temporary housing has gone up next door to the municipal sports center. Even in broad daylight, there is no one around.

The town’s volunteer coordination center is deserted too. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, more than 100 people worked as volunteers here.

Inside the Ōkawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, where nearly three quarters of the children lost their lives in the disaster.

This Onagawa apartment building bears the scars of the tsunami, which reached as high as the third floor.

Azumi Nobutaka, mayor of Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture since 2003.

Large mountains of rubble continue to disfigure the landscape.

Roads close to the harbor are still under water.

The intricate coastline and hundreds of small islands allowed Matsushima to escape with relatively little damage.

Ōhashi Takeo, mayor of Matsushima in Miyagi Prefecture since 2007.

Matsushima’s seafood specialties are returning to the shelves.

The wholesale fish market in Shiogama is starting to regain some of its former energy.

A cheerful-looking Suzuki Kiyotaka in the Shiogama fish market.

Flypaper inside an evacuation center. Flies have proved a major nuisance during the hot summer months.

Operated by the Self-Defense Forces, the “Kōbō no Yu” bath facilities have been a godsend for people in the evacuation centers.

Inside “Kōbō no Yu.”

Laundry hung out to dry next to the tennis courts.

In Onagawa port, recovery is still a long way off.

In the market at Shiogama, a supply of locally caught fish and other seafood has finally started to reappear.

A map showing the extent of flooding in and around Onagawa.

A map showing the extent of flooding in and around Matsushima and Shiogama.