The magnitude-9 earthquake

The magnitude-9 earthquake that struck on March 11 last year triggered a tsunami, 39 meters (128 feet) tall at its highest point, which crippled the Louis Vuitton handbags Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant and laid waste to entire towns as it came ashore along hundreds of kilometers of Japan’s Pacific coastline. More than 340,000 people are still living in temporary homes, official data show.
“What I’ve learned is that you still have to try to live life,” said Takeyoshi Kidoura, the international business manager at Kidoura Shipyards in Kesennuma, where city officials are embarking on a 10-year recovery plan to repair the city known for its fishing port and seafood processing. “Many people have lost their families, but life has to go on.”
The radiation that leaked from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501)’s Fukushima plant has left areas of land uninhabitable for decades, while support for the government plummeted as reconstruction was hindered by political in-fighting. Only 6 percent of the 22.5 million tons of debris left by the tsunami has been cleared.
Flowers, Prayers
National broadcaster NHK showed images of a memorial service in Okuma Town, inside the no-go zone around the nuclear plant. Mourners in white protective clothing offered flowers and prayers at a roadside, televised pictures showed.
Train operators across the capital announced plans to halt services to mark the anniversary and practice for emergency operations following an earthquake. Tokyu Corp. (9005), which operates bus and train services mainly in southwest Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture (KANZ),c said it increased a planned stop to 4 minutes from 1 minute to allow passengers time for “silent prayers.”
Similar events are taking place throughout the devastated areas. In Kesennuma, officials and residents will gather at the city’s gymnasium while a Pillars of Light ceremony -- three giant searchlights symbolizing hope, the future and indomitable spirit -- will be broadcast over the Internet.
Without Nuclear
In Sendai city, north of Fukushima, members of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives will hold a meeting to discuss the impact of the earthquake on the economy as well as alternatives to nuclear power. Only two of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors remain online following the accident in Fukushima, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986, with the last scheduled to be turned off for maintenance next month.
“It is clear that no amount of precautions will make a country completely safe from nuclear energy,” former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who oversaw the government’s response to the accident, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last week. “I have reached the conclusion, therefore, that the only option is to promote a society free of nuclear power.”
Environmental group Greenpeace International criticized the government’s handling of the radioactive contamination from the Dai-Ichi plant, saying that residents are still at risk. Areas of Fukushima City, with a population of 1 million, were contaminated up to 1,000 times the level of normal background radiation levels from before the accident, the group said in an e-mailed louis vuitton sunglasses statement last week.