Looking back | 4 years after devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan
The Natori area of Sendai, Japan, was completely destroyed by the March 2011 tsunami that followed a powerful offshore earthquake. Fires burned in the neighborhood as civil servants finally were able to enter the area to look for the dead. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
A family looks over what is left of its home in the Natori neighborhood hit hard by the tsunami that hit Sendai. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Government officials walk along a recently cleared roadway in Kesennuma, where the earthquake-spawned tsunami caused a massive fuel spill and fire further consuming the coastal town, famous for its tuna fishing fleet. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A bicycle sticks out of mud and debris in the destroyed Natori neighborhood. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In Natori area of Sendai was completely destroyed by the 2011 tsunami. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
A newly homeless resident of Minamisanriku passes through a neighborhood washed away by the tsunami the hit the Japanese coastal town. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Much of the town of Kesennuma was destroyed by tsunami. Boats were pushed inland. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
A man walks along a Kesennuma harbor road, where the tsunami deposited a ship. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“There is nothing left,” says Meguni Sasaki as she scans the ground, looking for remnants of her home. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Fishing boats are left in a pile-up in the northern Japanese city of Kesennuma. (Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images)
Smoke chokes the badly damaged town of Yamada, Japan, the day after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit the region. (Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images)
Soldiers search for tsunami victims in the debris as it snows in the town of Otsuchi. (AFP / Getty Images)
Fishing boats sit grounded on land three years after the disaster in Namie, near the striken nuclear plant in Japan. (Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP/Getty Images)
