The most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck 130 kilometers off the coast of Tōhoku, generating waves up to 40 meters high that obliterated coastal towns within minutes. The disaster killed roughly 19,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands, and caused meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, forcing the largest evacuation in Japan since World War II.
At 2:46 PM, the seafloor off Tōhoku lurched more than 50 meters in one of the largest tectonic ruptures ever measured, releasing energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of tons of TNT. Warning sirens gave coastal residents as little as eight minutes before the first wall of water arrived, and in towns like Minamisanriku, entire neighborhoods vanished beneath the surge, leaving only concrete foundations.
The tsunami knocked out backup power at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, disabling cooling systems and triggering hydrogen explosions that spread radioactive material across the region. Prime Minister Naoto Kan later said Japan came closer to losing Tokyo than the public ever realized. A decade later, robots were still being developed to probe the melted reactor cores because radiation levels remained too lethal for humans to approach.
The scale of loss was almost incomprehensible in its detail: whole fishing fleets swept inland, a cruise ship stranded atop a building, and a lone pine tree in Rikuzentakata that survived amid 70,000 uprooted trees, becoming a national symbol of endurance.