TOKYO – Japan today remembered the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the nation one year ago, killing just over 19,000 people and unleashing the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

Along the tsunami-battered northeastern coast, in Tokyo and elsewhere, memorial ceremonies were planned to mark 2:46 p.m. — the precise moment the magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit on March 11, 2011.

The quake was the strongest recorded in Japan’s history, and set off a tsunami that towered more than 65 feet in some spots along the northeastern coast, destroying thousands of homes and wreaking widespread destruction.

Today, some 325,000 people rendered homeless remain in temporary housing. While much of the debris has been gathered into massive piles, very little rebuilding has begun.

“I wish I could go back to my old house and get back our normal life again,” said Hyakuaiko Konno, a 64-year-old woman from the Ishinomaki coast who has been living in temporary housing for the past seven months.

The government says the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where three reactor cores melted down after the tsunami knocked out their vital cooling systems, is stable and that radiation coming from the plant has subsided significantly.

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But the plant’s chief acknowledged to journalists visiting the complex recently that it remains in a fragile state, and makeshift equipment — some mended with tape — could be seen keeping crucial systems running.

An anti-nuclear protest was also planned in downtown Tokyo today amid growing public opposition to atomic power in the wake of the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.

Only two of Japan’s 54 reactors are now running, while those shut down for regular inspections undergo special tests to check their ability to withstand similar disasters.

The Japanese government has pledged to reduce reliance on nuclear power, which supplied about 30 percent of the nation’s energy needs before the disaster, but says it needs to restart some nuclear plants to meet Japan’s energy needs during the transition period.

Japan’s prime minister has acknowledged failures in the government’s response to the disaster, being too slow in relaying key information and believing too much in “a myth of safety” about nuclear power.

“We can no longer make the excuse that what was unpredictable and outside our imagination has happened,” Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told a group of reporters last weekend. “Crisis management requires us to imagine what may be outside our imagination.”

 


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