General News

Services Held in Coastal Areas for Disaster Victims; Number of Yearly Events Declining As Relatives Age

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:23 JST, March 11, 2025

SENDAI — Tuesday marked the 14th anniversary of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. People gathered from early morning to remember victims in the coastal areas of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, which were struck by the massive tsunami.

Memorial services were held in 15 cities and towns in the three prefectures from 2:46 p.m., the time the earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011.

The number of such services is on the decline, however, and the challenge now is to find appropriate ways to continue to mourn victims.

Among the people who laid flowers at a memorial cenotaph in Iwanuma, Miyagi Prefecture, on Tuesday morning was an 82-year-old homemaker from the city.

“I hope he’s watching over us from heaven,” she said as she touched the name inscribed on the monument of her late brother-in-law, who was 84 at the time of the disaster.

Iwanuma has not held official memorial services for the victims since 2022, and this year will be the last time it holds a memorial event in collaboration with a citizens group.

“It’s becoming difficult to continue holding such services, primarily because of the aging of the bereaved families,” a city official said.

The Yomiuri Shimbun gathered information on memorial services in 37 municipalities in the coastal areas of the three prefectures. It found that 32 local governments held ceremonies in 2021, but only 17 did so in 2024. This year, 15, or about 40%, of the municipalities held services.

The city of Ofunato in Iwate Prefecture and the town of Tomioka in Fukushima Prefecture decided not to hold memorial services this year. The Ofunato municipal government said it has made the decision before the recent wildfire.

“The number of participants has decreased partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’ve taken into consideration the fact that bereaved families now prefer to spend their time at places they like on the anniversary,” an Ofunato city official said.

In Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, a memorial service was held Tuesday with bereaved families in attendance. In the city, 3,970 people died or went missing in the disaster, or died later in connection with it.

The city’s disaster memorial promotion office said it plans to continue holding services in the future, as doing so is “the responsibility of the hardest-hit area.”

Five municipalities, including Tanohata, Iwate Prefecture, as well as Kesennuma and Shichigahama in Miyagi Prefecture, did not hold a ceremony this year. They plan to hold events in 2026 on the 15th anniversary.

Prefectural governments also were split in their handling of prefecture-sponsored ceremonies.

Iwate and Fukushima prefectures held memorial services on Tuesday, while Miyagi Prefecture did not hold a ceremony sponsored by the prefecture, mainly because municipal governments handled such events.

“Memorial ceremonies let people confirm and share the experiences of disaster victims and engrave them in their memories,” said Atsushi Kawauchi, an associate professor at Tohoku University’s International Research Institute of Disaster Science.

“It’s important to think about how to pass on the memories of the victims to future generations. It can be done, for instance, by creating opportunities to convey them as local history,” said Kawauchi, who specializes in the study of regional history records.