page_title: 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
section_title: Japan
hierarchical_section_title: 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami / Casualties / Japan
caption_attribution_description: English: Someone set a Buddhist painting and signposts of prayer and wish at the top of Mt. Hiyoriyama, a 6.3m high man-made hill in Natori, Miyagi where the tsunamis attacked. 日本語: 宮城県名取市の閖上地区にある日和山（標高6.3m）の頂上に誰かが立てた祈りと希望の道標、および仏画。
context_page_description: The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku was a magnitude 9.0–9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday 11 March 2011, with the epicenter approximately 70 kilometers east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku and the hypocenter at an underwater depth of approximately 29 km.
  The earthquake is often referred to in Japan as the Great East Japan Earthquake and is also known as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, the Great Sendai Earthquake, the Great Tōhoku Earthquake, and the great earthquake of March 11.
  It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900.
  The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters in Miyako in Tōhoku's Iwate Prefecture, and which, in the Sendai area, traveled at 700 km/h and up to 10 km inland. Residents of Sendai had only eight to ten minutes of warning, and more than a hundred evacuation sites were washed away.
context_section_description: In Japan, the National Police Agency has confirmed 15,899 deaths, 6,157 injured, and 2,529 people missing across twenty prefectures. In addition, some three thousands extra deaths have been identified as "earthquake-related deaths", bringing the total number of deaths caused by the disaster to 19,575 as of 2017 September.
  Of the 13,135 fatalities recovered by 11 April 2011, 12,143 or 92.5% died by drowning. Victims aged 60 or older accounted for 65.2% of the deaths, with 24% of total victims being in their 70s. As of March 2012, Japanese police data showed that 70% of the 3,279 still missing were aged 60 or over, all found, including 893 in their 70s and 577 in their 80s. Of the total confirmed victims, 14,308 drowned, 667 were crushed to death or died from internal injuries, and 145 perished from burns.
  For the purpose of relief fund distribution, an "earthquake-related death" is defined as a case where the earthquake did not directly kill a person, but acted as a contributory factor that indirectly caused their death. Some of the most widely reported reason for these deaths include "Physical and mental fatigue caused by life in temporary shelter", "Physical and mental fatigue caused by evacuation", "Delayed treatment due to an inoperative hospital", "Physical and mental fatigue caused by stress from the earthquake and tsunami". A few cases of suicide are also included. Most of these deaths occurred during the first six months after the earthquake and the number dropped thereafter, but as time has passed, the number has continued to increase. Most of these deaths occurred in Fukushima prefecture, where the prefecture government has suggested that they could be due to evacuations caused by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. These indirect casualties have already resulted in more deaths than the number of people killed directly by earthquake and tsunami within the Fukushima prefecture.
  Save the Children reports that as many as 100,000 children were uprooted from their homes, some of whom were separated from their families because the earthquake occurred during the school day. 236 children were orphaned in the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima by the disaster; 1,580 children lost either one or both parents, 846 in Miyagi, 572 in Iwate, and 162 in Fukushima. The quake and tsunami killed 378 elementary, middle-school, and high school students and left 158 others missing. One elementary school in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, Okawa Elementary, lost 74 of 108 students and 10 of 13 teachers and staff.
  The Japanese Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of nineteen foreigners. Among them were two English teachers from the United States affiliated with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program; a Canadian missionary in Shiogama; and citizens of China, North and South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan and the Philippines.
  By 9:30 UTC on 11 March 2011, Google Person Finder, which was previously used in the Haitian, Chilean, and Christchurch, New Zealand earthquakes, was collecting information about survivors and their locations.
  Japanese funerals are normally elaborate Buddhist ceremonies that entail cremation. The thousands of bodies, however, exceeded the capacity of available crematoriums and morgues, many of them damaged, and there were shortages of both kerosene—each cremation requires 50 litres—and dry ice for preservation. The single crematorium in Higashimatsushima, for example, could only handle four bodies a day, although hundreds were found there. Governments and the military were forced to bury many bodies in hastily dug mass graves with rudimentary or no rites, although relatives of the deceased were promised that they would be cremated later.
  Noted individual fatalities within Japan included 104-year-old Takashi Shimokawara, holder of the world athletics records in the men's shot put, discus throw and javelin throw for the over-100 age category. He was killed by the earthquake and tsunami at Kamaishi, Iwate.
  As of 27 May 2011, three Japan Ground Self-Defense Force members had died while conducting relief operations in Tōhoku. 
caption: Memorials amongst the ruins, Natori
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