RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Japan’s prime minister promised to support the hundreds of thousands of people who lost everything in a massive tsunami, as he laid eyes Saturday for the first time on the destruction of the country’s northeastern coast.
More than 16,000 people are still missing after
the disaster, which officials fear may have killed some 25,000 people. The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami also ravaged a nuclear power plant.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan went to the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex immediately after the wave knocked out cooling systems, leaving workers u
nable to control overheating nuclear reactors and allowing radiation to seep out.
But Saturday marked his first visit to some of the dozens of villages, towns and cities wiped out in the March 11 disaster. Dressed in the blue work clothes that have become almost a uniform for officials, Kan stopped first in Rikuzentakata — a town of about 20,000 people that was flattened by the torrent of water.
The town hall still stands, but all its windows are blown out and a tangle of metal and other debris is piled in front of it. The prime minister paused in front of the building and bowed his head for a minute of silence.
He later visited an elementary school, which, like scores of schools and sports centers up and down the coast, is serving as an evacuation center.
“The government fully supports you until the end,” Kan told the 250 evacuees.
Helicopters, planes and boats carrying U.S. and Japanese troops resumed a massive search of the entire coast Saturday. Altogether, 25,000 troops, 120 helicopters and 65 ships will search through Sunday in what may be one of the last such operations. So far, more than 11,700 deaths have been confirmed.
“Unfortunately, we’ve come across remains over the scope of our mission, so it may be more likely than you think” to find bodies at sea so long after the disaster, said U.S. Navy Lt. Anthony Falvo.
Some may have sunk and just now be resurfacing. Others may never be found. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 37,000 of the 164,000 people who died in Indonesia simply disappeared, their bodies presumably washed out to sea.
The Japanese military stopped short of saying the search would end for good after Sunday, but public affairs official Yoshiyuki Kotake said activities will be limited. The search includes places that were submerged or remain underwater, along with the mouths of major rivers and the ocean as far as 12 miles (20 kilometers) from shore.
Police officers have also been searching for bodies in decimated towns inland, but in some cases their efforts have been complicated or even stymied by dangerous levels of radiation from the nuclear plant, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.
People who live within 12 miles (20 kilometers) have been forced to leave, though residents are growing increasingly frustrated and have been sneaking back to check on their homes. Government officials warned Friday that there were no plans to lift the evacuation order anytime soon.
“I don’t think the evacuation zones make any sense,” said Tadayuki Matsumoto, a 46-year-old construction worker who lives in a zone 15 miles (25 kilometers) away where residents have been advised to stay indoors. “They don’t seem to have thought it out and are making things up as they go along.”
Radiation concerns have rattled the Japanese public, already struggling to return to normal life after the earthquake-generated tsunami pulverized hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the northeastern coast. Three weeks after the disaster in one of the most connected countries in the world, 260,000 households still do not have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity.
Officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said Friday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog was sending two reactor specialists to Japan to get firsthand information. They will meet experts in Tokyo and may go to the Fukushima site.
“The overall situation is basically unchanged,” senior official Denis Flory told reporters. “It is still very serious.”
In a positive turn, though, officials said samples from Iitate — about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Fukushima complex — show that radiation levels are decreasing. Earlier in the week they were substantially higher than levels at which it would recommend evacuations.
Japan’s nuclear safety agency on Friday ordered plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. to review its latest measurements of radiation in air, seawater and groundwater samples, saying they seemed suspiciously high.
TEPCO has repeatedly made mistakes in analyzing radiation levels, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it might eventually order a complete review of all radiation data collected since the tsunami.
Though the size of recent leaks is unclear, it appears radiation is still streaming out of the plant, underscoring TEPCO’s inability to get it under control.
The company has increasingly asked for international help, most recently ordering giant pumps from the U.S. that will arrive later this month to spray water on the reactors.
In hard-hit Natori, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) down the coast from Rikuzentakata, dozens lined up to apply for funds as aircraft searching for bodies zoomed overhead.
Many people lost all of their possessions, including IDs, so the city has created software that compares neighborhoods before and after the tsunami. People point out where they lived, and if the house in that location has been destroyed, they are eligible for $1,200 in assistance.
Some applying for the funds, like 33-year-old Osamu Sato, said it would be hardly be enough. He and his pregnant wife bought their apartment and moved in six months before the tsunami destroyed it, plus all of their new furniture and electronics.
“To be honest, 100,000 yen doesn’t help much,” Sato said. “I’ve lost everything.”
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Alabaster reported from Sendai. Associated Press writers Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Eric Talmadge in Fukushima and Ryan Nakashima, Mari Yamaguchi, Mayumi Saito, Noriko Kitano, Shino Yuasa and Cara Rubinsky in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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