“Wasurenai”: An interactive map of victims of the 2011 Tsunami

“Wasurenai” which stands for “We will never forget” is an interactive digital archive displaying the last moments of the victims in the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami disaster.

The digital archive is created by as a collaboration between the team led by Hidenori Watanave, an associate professor of the Tokyo Metropolitan University and the Iwate Nippo newspaper.

The map was made through painstaking effort of interviewing the relatives and friends of the victims and gathering eyewitness accounts, piecing together the movement of 1326 individuals whose location of their final minutes were verified.

The earthquake, which shook the entire eastern half of Japan occurred at 14:46. Immediately, many of the dots, which signifies the location of the victims (men in blue, and women in red) starts to move. The trace shows their movement in the last 10 minutes.

Some tries to flee to the high ground but could not make it. Some head to the nearby designated evacuation center (often a school or town office) without knowing that the devastating tsunami is approaching. And many more stay at home, taking care of the mess that was left after the quake, oblivious to their fate.

Clicking each dot shows the name, and where they were heading at the time. There is a woman, who was riding a car which surely could have taken her to safety, but was swept away by the tsunami trying to reach her elderly parents living nearby. There is a town official, whose duty was to notify the approaching tsunami through a loudspeaker, continued her task without evacuating and thus died on site, her voice remembered by many who made it to the high grounds.

Each dot represents a person. Some stayed at home, some tried to evacuate, and didn’t make it.

The digital archive tries tell the story of each individual who have lost their lives on that day. Also, it is a source of significant information giving insight on how we can improve the survival rate in case of another disaster.

The lesson learned is that during an earthquake and its subsequent tsunami disaster, one cannot put too much confidence on the safety of the designated evacuation centers, and must try to reach the elevated region as fast as possible.

One can only hope that their loss is not in vain, but through these haunting images a new foundation of disaster preparedness will emerge and protect the region for generations to come.

March 11, 2016 marks the 5-year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster that took the life of more than 15000 people.

（This article is a semi-translation of my blog post, and a first of my coming coverage of topics and stories originating from Japan.）