The Tokyo team of senior producer Haruka Nuga, photographers Eugene Hoshiko and Hiro Komae, correspondent Mari Yamaguchi and video journalist Chisato Tanaka produced a string of visually driven exclusives to feed global curiosity about how Japan has fared a decade after one of history’s worst tragedies — the massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that upended the lives of millions in 2011.
Nuga and Hoshiko spent time on the battered northeastern coast while Yamaguchi, Tanaka and Komae made their way into the area around the Fukushima nuclear plant. The trips produced compelling before-and-after images of the wreckage, and all-formats vignettes of the lives of the survivors with explainers, galleries, videos and exclusive stories.
Among the highlights were the moving story of a man who learned to dive in old age so he could search, week after week, for the remains of his wife, and gripping visual essays of the still-scarred landscape of northeast Japan, the eerie no-go zones near the nuclear plant and a hotel that has done weekly bus tours for hundreds of thousands of visitors interested in seeing the ravaged landscape. AP’s video showing was particularly strong, including footage of people symbolically searching the beach for bodies of the missing and quick live views of commemorative ceremonies across the country.
At a fire station in Futaba, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, shown Feb. 28, 2021, the clock reads a few minutes after 2:46 p.m., the time when a massive earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, unleashing a tsunami that damaged the Fukushima’s nuclear power plant. The fire station is in the area that was formerly designated as the nuclear disaster exclusion zone, but this part of the zone was lifted in March 2020.
AP Photo / Hiro Komae
An abandoned restaurant in the exclusion zone in Tomioka town, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, Feb. 27, 2021. The no-go zone sits within about 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where massive radioactive fallouts was released in 2011.
AP Photo / Hiro Komae
Firefighters’s gear hangs at an abandoned fire station in Futaba, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, Feb. 28, 2021. The fire station is in the area that was formerly designated as the nuclear disaster exclusion zone.
AP Photo / Hiro Komae
Bags containing radioactive soil, chopped down tree branches and other debris from areas affected by the nuclear power plant disaster following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, are piled at a temporary storage area in the exclusion zone in Tomioka, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, Feb. 26, 2021.
AP Photo / Hiro Komae
A worker for Tokyo Electric Power Co. stands by a gate at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, Feb. 27, 2021.
AP Photo / Hiro Komae
From top left to bottom right, an area of the city of Minamisanriku, in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, is shown March 15, 2011, after the tsunami; on Feb. 23, 2012; on March 5, 2016; and on March 6, 2021.
AP Photos / David Guttenfelder and Eugene Hoshiko
Yasuo Takamatsu is interviewed at Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, March 8, 2021. Takamatsu, 64, lost his wife, Yuko, when the tsunami hit Onagawa on March 11, 2011. He has been looking for her ever since, even getting a diving license and going on weekly dives for seven years to try to find her remains.
AP Photo / Eugene Hoshiko
Yasuo Takamatsu is interviewed at Onagawa, Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, March 8, 2021. Takamatsu, 64, has been looking for his wife Yuko since the 2011 tsunami, even getting a diving license and going on weekly dives for seven years to try to find her remains.
AP Photo / Eugene Hoshiko
The former local disaster prevention center where 43 workers died in the 2011 tsunami is seen from a bus window during a “Kataribe,” or “storytelling,” bus tour in Minamisanriku, Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, March 6, 2021. A local hotel runs daily tours for their guests and visitors, taking them for a bus ride around various tsunami landmarks throughout the town for an hour.
AP Photo / Eugene Hoshiko