TOKYO (AP) – Images still have the power to shock.
Stunned survivors walk under huge tankers deposited amid an expanse of rubble and twisted iron that was once a busy center, the ships toppled sideways like children’s toys. Grieving survivors search the wreckage where their homes used to be. Abandoned farms are shaded by the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where a catastrophic collapse still reverberates.
These sweeping images were captured by the Associated Press in 2011, after a huge wall of water leveled off part of Japan’s northeast coast, carrying cars, houses, office buildings and thousands of people.
Ten years later, AP journalists returned to document communities that were destroyed by what is simply referred to here as the Great East Japan Earthquake. The desire to rebuild on a land that has been destroyed by millennia of disasters – volcanic eruptions, tsunamis , earthquakes, war and famine – it is strong, and there are areas where there is little or no trace of the devastation of 2011.
But this triple disaster in Japan’s Tohoku region – earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown – was unlike any other Japan has ever faced, and the challenges of returning to what was normal a decade ago were immense. Half a million were forced to leave their homes; tens of thousands did not return, emptying cities that were already struggling to prevent their young people from leaving for Tokyo and other megacities. Fear of radiation lingers. The government’s incompetence, petty disputes and bureaucratic disputes have delayed construction efforts.
Despite setbacks and uneven progress, the 2021 Tohoku is a testament to a collective willpower – national, local and personal. Look carefully, however, and you will see that even the most impressive transformations carry the residue of what happened in 2011, the scars of that deep wound in the region’s psyche.
These AP images, then and now, raise a fundamental question: how do you mark the change after a major trauma?
In a way, it is the simplest thing in the world to describe. The removal of tons of rubble here, the absence of oil tankers over there. The paved roads where cracked and dented asphalt piles used to be. The new, shiny buildings that now rise above what had been removed by patches of earth.
But the severity of this physical change also carries the idea of something that is much less clear, something about the people who live in those places. His resilience, his stoicism, his pain and anger and his stubborn refusal to bow to forces beyond his control, whether natural or bureaucratic.
All of this and more is present in these powerful before and after scenes, before and now.
The photos tell the story – of great changes and the people who made them happen.