Scenes of devastation at center of disaster

SENDAI, Japan—She scanned the landscape of debris and destruction, looking at the patch of earth where Japan’s massive tsunami erased her son’s newly built house so thoroughly that she can’t even be certain where it once stood.

Satako Yusawa teared up but pulled herself together quickly. Because for the 69-year-old widow, there was this to be thankful for: Her son and his family were out of town when Friday’s monster quake sparked huge surges of water that washed fleets of cars, boats and entire houses across coastal Sendai like detritus perched on lava.

Thousands were feared dead from the quake and the tsunami, including more than 10,000 in Miyagi prefecture, or state, alone. Sendai, a port city of one million people, bore much of the brunt of the tsunami.

Yusawa’s son had borrowed a lot of money to build that house, and had moved in only last month.

“This,” she said, “is life.”

For those who survived in Sendai, the bleakest of landscapes unfolded before them.

Mud-spattered survivors wandered streets strewn with fallen trees and houses ripped from foundations, alongside smaller relics of destroyed lives—a desk chair, a beer cooler. Power and phone reception remained cut.

This is what it looks like when the earth shakes, the water comes and the fires burn: Life is interrupted, reduced for hours and days to basic survival. Conveniences, taken for granted in one of the world’s most developed societies, become mere hopes for tomorrow.

Table saved him

Yoshio Miura, 65, was in his trucking company office when the rumbling started, sending him under a table and dislodging heavy metal cabinets.

“These cabinets fell down right on top of me, and luckily they were stopped by this table,” he said. Then came the water—massive waves that swept some 10 kilometers inland.

Many Sendai residents spent the first night outdoors, unable to return to homes destroyed in the disaster. Business owners chipped in with help. At an electronics store, workers gave away batteries, flashlights and cell phone chargers.

The tsunami hit the city’s dock area and then barreled down a long approach road, carrying giant metal shipping containers about 2 kilometers inland and smashing buildings along the way.

Chaos everywhere

Hundreds of cars and trucks were strewn throughout the area—on top of buildings, wedged into stairwells, standing on their noses or leaning against each other.

A wrecked airplane lay nose-deep in splintered wood from wrecked homes.

“Is it a dream? I just feel like I am in a movie or something,” said Ichiro Sakamoto, 50, in Hitachi, a city in Ibaraki prefecture. “Whenever I am alone I have to pinch my cheek to check whether it’s a dream or not.”

“There have been tsunamis before but no one ever thought that it could be like this,” said Michiko Yamada, a 75-year-old in Rikuzentakata, a nearly flattened village in far-northern Iwate prefecture. “The tsunami was black and I saw people on cars and an old couple get swept away right in front of me.”

In Rikuzentakata, survivors scrambled to retrieve their belongings, at times clambering over uprooted trees to reach leveled homes. Several neighborhoods were completely swept away.

All that remained was a vast wasteland of mud, pieces of wood, and household goods, along with a few sturdy buildings that withstood the devastation.

Cars were flipped, sometimes atop one another.

No birthday party

About 1,340 people took refuge in a school during near-freezing temperatures. Worried relatives checked an information board on survivors, some weeping, others crying and huddling in a group.

“I am looking for my parents and my older brother,” Yuko Abe, 54, said in tears. “Seeing the way the area is, I thought that perhaps they did not make it.”

Takako Koguchi turned 78 on Thursday. On Friday, hours before a planned birthday celebration, she saw a wave of black water coursing through the streets of the fishing town of Nakaminato, heading toward her.

Koguchi rushed to her car, escaping shortly before the swirling, debris-laden water crumpled one of the walls of her small ryokan, or inn.

In Nakaminato, you could smell the effects of the tsunami as much as see it: The air stank of dead fish and the sticky brown mud deposited by the three feet of water that had flowed freely through the roads closest to the ocean.

Koguchi spent the night in a community center, in freezing temperatures. She had not eaten in 24 hours.

Many hours after the quake struck, people remained on edge.

Livelihood in tatters

Before the waves hit, Nakaminato’s buildings had a worn-out look; the town had been left behind by the country’s industrial buildup and by the young people who headed for thriving cities.

The mostly aging population made its living mainly from fishing; the heart of the community was a fishing co-op on the waterfront.

The waterfront was battered, its livelihood in tatters. Giant freezers in the co-op were stacked on top of each other, packed against a far wall where the waves had pushed them. Forty-foot fishing boats, tilting in all directions, were piled on top of a long concrete wharf.

And the fish, mostly silver and blue bonito, were everywhere, mouths agape.

The scenes of destruction were especially frightening because they were far from the worst-hit areas. Nakaminato sits about 250 km south of Sendai.

“This is the first time in my more than 70 years that something like this has happened,” said onion farm owner Yukio Kobayashi, 71. His fields were coated with mud. Reports from Associated Press, New York Times News Service and Reuters