Japan Pauses to Remember on Disaster's First Anniversary
Live television images of the Emperor and Empress being beamed into the memorial ceremony in a gymnasium in Onnagawa, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
Lighting candles in Matsushima to remember those killed, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
Sunday's edition of the Kahoku Shimpo newspaper carried the names of the 19,000+ dead and missing, March 12, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
Piles of tsunami debris along the northeast Japanese coast, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
A house damaged by the tsunami remains on March 9, 2012 at it was on March 11, 2011. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
A building toppled by the tsunami still on its side in Onnagawa, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
A large tank carried several hundred meters by the tsunami lies on its side on a road in Miyagi Prefecture, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
Sign at entrance of Ishinomaki City has yet to be uprighted, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)
Ian-Benjamin Sasaki Herman, 13, ringing a memorial bell for the quake and tsunami victims in Ishinkomaki, March 9, 2012. (VOA - S. L. Herman)