by WorldTribune Staff, March 13, 2026 Real World News
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake triggered a massive tsunami which devastated Japan’s northeast coast and led to the triple meltdown at the nuclear power plant at Fukushima. Photos of the devastation can be seen here.
Of the 19,759 reported deaths, more than 90% were caused by drowning from the tsunami, particularly in the Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures.
“Although virtually all the deaths were attributed, directly or indirectly, to the 128-foot-high wave triggered by one of the world’s worst earthquakes, radiation was the reason why 44,000 from six municipalities were evacuated right after the tsunami,” Donald Kirk noted in a March 12 op-ed for The New York Sun.
“They still are not able to return while giant cranes remove soil that may have been contaminated by the fallout from the power plant.”
One person’s death, from lung cancer, was later attributed to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant. That figure compares to 30 victims of radiation when the Russian nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986,. Thousands more died later from cancer due to radiation.
At the Fukushima plant, three of its six reactors melted down in the flooding, all six total losses.
“The fear of radiation, as the reactors heated uncontrollably and the waters around them boiled before being discharged into the sea, panicked everyone,” Kirk noted. “All told about 100,000 people living within 20 kilometers were rushed out of harm’s way. Hundreds of hospital patients and elderly people, many in retirement homes, died for lack of food and medicine. Many more were said to have died from accidents — or sheer panic.”
Japan after the disaster shut down all 54 of its nuclear power reactors which had relieved the country of its total dependence on oil, 95 percent of it from the Middle East.
Japan by now has reopened 14 of them, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said she wants many more to go back on line. Nuclear power “protects our livelihoods and industries,“ she said during, as quoted by Japan’s Jiji Press.
During a memorial for the victims of the March 11, 2011 disaster, Takaichi said: “I am overcome with profound sorrow when I think of the feelings of those who lost their beloved family members, relatives and friends.” She blamed “the massive earthquake and tsunami, along with the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant,” for depriving many people “of their everyday lives.”
Harrowing memories of that day 15 years ago live on.
“I am filled with regret and frustration,” a 75-year-old farmer, who lost his wife and mother to the flood, told one of the big Japanese newspapers, Asahi Shimbun. “Looking back, 15 years have flown by in a flash.”
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15 years later: Japan’s massive tsunami, not meltdown, killed 19,759; Nuclear power returning added by Editor Two on
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