Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami remembered

At 2.45 pm local time on March 11th 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, triggering a tsunami with waves as high as 38 metres. The Japanese community in Sydney is commemorating the 10th anniversary of the devastating event that also triggered the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown.

Kyoma Takahashi was a 16-year-old student when the quake hit his hometown of Ishinomaki, in Miyagi prefecture on Japan’s main island of Honshu. 

/ Kyorna Takahashi 

“When the earthquake hit, I was outside the prefecture to attend school,” he says. “I was separated from the rest of my family and there was no way to confirm their safety.  I had to go through this excruciating time filled with fear of being left alone.”

He was later told that he’d lost both his grandmother and grandfather in the tsunami. “It was like a TV or a film, people can lose their lives so easily,” he said. 

The quake struck approximately 130 kilometres east of the city of Sendai at a relatively shallow depth of 30 kilometres on the floor of the western Pacific Ocean.

A massive tsunami was triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake which also caused widespread destruction on land.

The tsunami inundated over 500,000 square kilometres of land. More than 15,000 people died, 492,000 were evacuated, and over 16,000 were reported missing. 

Images broadcast around the world in near real-time showed tens of thousands of homes and buildings destroyed. 

The tsunami also went on to instigate a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant further south along the coast, where water flooded the reactors sparking a radiation leak and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Kyoma Takahashi came to Sydney in search of a safe place outside Japan.

He arrived in Australia three years ago and hopes to bring his family to the city, which is virtually earthquake-free, in the future.

“I really don’t want my mother to end her life in a disruptive manner (like his grandmother).  In terms of natural disasters, I think that Japan is dangerous.  I don’t want to see any more deaths which is not the fault of anyone.  I never want to feel that powerless again,” he said

“If I hadn’t experienced the disaster, I might have not come here”.