TOKYO, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Japanese Sunday remembered the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that visited death and destruction on the northeast region six months ago.
People prayed silently to mark the 9-magnitude earthquake that struck at 2:46 p.m. and was followed by a monstrous tsunami. The disaster also triggered a radiation-leaking nuclear crisis, the worst since Chernobyl, at the nuclear power plant in the Fukushima prefecture, which has yet to be fully contained.
Others marked the occasion, which coincided with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, by holding rallies to oppose nuclear power, Kyodo News reported.
The quake and tsunami killed or left missing about 20,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and inflicted damage running into the hundreds of billions of dollars on the Japanese economy even as it was making a slow recovery from recession.
While the nuclear crisis remains a concern, there has been progress in other areas, such as restoration of the supply chain issues that had led to severe parts shortages in the critical auto and electronic industries immediately after the disaster.
Shortage of power, however, remains a major issue as Japan is heavily dependent on nuclear power.
Last week, the government said Japan's economy shrank at a 2.1 percent annual rate in the second quarter, the third straight quarterly decline.
A Yomiuri Shimbun poll released Sunday showed 68 percent of Japanese remain concerned they or their families could be harmed by the radioactive material that escaped from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Eighty percent said they worry another major quake could hit the specific areas where they live.
"Regardless of where in the world a nuclear crisis happens, it affects everybody," University of California-Berkeley Professor Jasmina Vujik told CNN. "Fukushima definitely did affect the entire nuclear energy community."
Debate continues around the world on how best to learn from Japan's tragedy, including even whether to move away from nuclear energy as Germany has done, the report said.
