In Pictures: Tsunami scars linger a decade later in Japan

Dazed survivors walk beneath huge sea tankers deposited amid an expanse of rubble and twisted metal that was once a busy downtown, the ships toppled onto their sides like children’s toys. Grieving survivors pick through the flattened debris where their homes used to be. Deserted farms stand in the shadow of the Fukushima nuclear plant, where a catastrophic meltdown still reverberates. These arresting images were captured by The Associated Press in 2011 after a massive wall of water levelled part of Japan’s northeastern coast, washing away cars, homes, office buildings and thousands of people. Ten years later, AP journalists returned to document the communities that were ripped apart by what is referred to here as simply the Great East Japan Earthquake. The urge to rebuild in a land that has been wracked by millennia of disaster – volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, war and famine – is powerful, and there are areas where there is little or no trace of the devastation of 2011.