March is a busy month for those involved in memorial activities in Tohoku. This is when buses carry school groups and visitors from across the country to museums and disaster heritage sites to learn about what happened on March 11, 14 years ago.
Readers will be well aware of the events of those days. The Great East Japan Earthquake, the largest ever recorded in the country, triggered a massive tsunami that devastated large parts of Tohoku’s coastline and caused a nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant. Nearly 20,000 people lost their lives.
Ensuring that subsequent generations never forget this tragedy and that such devastation never occurs again is the main goal of memorial activities. Yet we are witnessing a vanishing of institutional disaster memory as numerous 3/11 heritage sites, activities and digital archives struggle to keep functioning.
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