March 2011 Disaster Victims Remembered in Northeastern Japan

Otsuchi, Iwate Pref., March 11 (Jiji Press)--Victims of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were remembered in the hardest hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima in northeastern Japan on Wednesday, the 15th anniversary of the disaster.

Along the Pacific coast of the three prefectures, people gathered from early in the morning to pray for those who perished in the disaster, which happened on March 11, 2011, leaving 22,230 people dead or missing nationwide, including those who died from indirect causes. It is the largest natural disaster in postwar Japan.

At the Koganji temple in Otsuchi, an Iwate town, local resident Takafumi Sasaki, 75, put his numbed hands together at the grave of his younger brother who died at 58 while working as a town official during the disaster.

"I wish he had evacuated instead of holding a meeting," Sasaki said. "Everyone is doing well," he said to the gravestone.

In the Hajikami Suginoshita district of Kesennuma, a Miyagi city, Kazuo Sato, 72, who lost his mother, raised "koinobori" carp-shaped decorative windsocks, traditionally flown to pray for healthy growth of boys.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]