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March 11th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Throughout the region devastated by the tsunami, only 58 per cent of the
population evacuated when they heard the sirens, according to a government
survey.
In the days before the earthquake, there had been a series of smaller
foreshocks, including one that measured magnitude 7.2. In turn, Japan¡¯s
meteorological office had issued tsunami alerts, all of which had proved
false. By the time the earthquake struck, some had begun to disregard the
warnings.
Others simply decided that the wave would not affect them. In Ofunato, a brown
stone marks the furthest point which a previous tsunami had reached in 1960.
Over the years, the town came to regard anything built beyond the marker as
safe. But last year’s wave was twice as big.
Sato Tokiko, 48, lost her 74 year-old father, who had survived the 1960
tsunami and assumed his house was beyond the safety line. “My mother
died two years before the tsunami,” she said. “We think my father
just wanted to be with her. He would not have wanted to leave her altar in
the house.”
When the wave struck, Japan’s sophisticated set of offshore buoys, designed to
measure the height of tsunamis, malfunctioned. The official alert
dramatically understated the size of the wave, misleading many to think they
would be safe.
Along the north-east coastline, 15,854 died in the disaster and 3,155 are
classified as missing, either because their relatives are still searching
for them, or because they do not have the paperwork to register the death.
Police teams have pledged to keep searching for the dead, despite the
hopelessness of the task.
In Ofunato, the day began with snow, a reminder that those who survived the
disaster went on to struggle for weeks in the winter cold, many without
heating or supplies.
But as the moment of the anniversary neared, the warming sun emerged from the
clouds. After a series of speeches, mourners lay white lilies and
chrysanthemums and silence fell, a palpable sense of sorrow rippling across
the crowd.
And then: a collective exhalation, relief and perhaps a sense of closure. “For
a lot of people this year has passed very quickly, like a bad dream,”
said Hashimoto Katsuo, a 74-year-old monk who has counselled the town and
helped conduct an earlier memorial service.
“The mental anguish, including a feeling of guilt for surviving, is very
deep. I know one man who lost his wife who was just a few feet away from him
in the water. But we must try to be active, to communicate with each other,
and search for happiness. That is how we will get over the terror of what
has happened,” he said.
As the ceremony ended, Buddhist monks chanted sutras and the crowd streamed to
the docks to release prayers and paper cranes into the water. The bay was
entirely calm, the water a deep cobalt blue.
The town’s remaining eight boats were already out. They had sailed to where
two of the fleet had capsized, drowning all on board.
“When we heard the alarm last year, we sailed straight out to sea,”
explained one fisherman, Watari Koichi, 58. “We made it past the wave
before it got to shore and stayed out there for two days. But our friends
never made it out of the bay.”
The fleet only started fishing again two days ago, and it was the first chance
for them to mark their friends’ passing. “We circled the spot where
they died three times, cut our engines, said a prayer and a final goodbye,”
said Kotsubo Teruo, another fisherman.
Ofunato’s largest ship, the Mikasa Maru, then set sail for the mouth of the
bay to complete the remembrance service. As part of the ‘toro nagashi’, a
Buddhist memorial ritual, paper lanterns inscribed with prayers were floated
onto the ocean.
Afterwards, in the late afternoon sunshine, as the town’s residents slowly
filtered away, there were smiles, some laughs, and a feeling that the dead
had been properly honoured.
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