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Last year's tsunami virtually destroyed many northern Japanese fishing communities. A year later, residents are struggling to rebuild, but as Sam Eaton reports, some are finding that the disaster has given them the opportunity to chart a new course. Last March 11, Hiromitsu Ito stood on a rocky hillside and watched a wave more than a hundred feet tall swallow the shore below, lift his house off its foundation, and slam it into a nearby bridge. |
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When the massive wave pulled back out to sea, Ito says, it dragged everything with it–the house, his boat, his fishing gear, his entire aquaculture business, and pretty much everything else in the small fishing village of Ogatsu. Hundreds here died that day. And since then even more have left for good. A year later, less than a quarter of Ogatsu's four-thousand residents remain. Before the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeast coast a year ago, this jagged and dramatic stretch of coastline, some 270 miles northeast of Tokyo, was one of the country's biggest sources of shellfish and seaweed. |
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