A man of 60 was found alive ten miles out to sea having spent two days adrift on the remains of the roof of his house.
Hiromitsu Shinkawa was picked up by a Japanese naval ship off the town of Minami-Soma. He had been set adrift as he and his wife gathered up possessions from their house after the earthquake and were caught up in the tsunami.
He repeatedly failed to get the attention of rescue craft, but was eventually spotted waving a red cloth.
“Several helicopters and ships passed by, but none of them noticed me,” Mr Shinkawa told rescuers. “I thought today was the last day of my life.” His wife remained missing, presumed drowned.
In Sendai, a man was saved by the weight of his four-tonne lorry. Koichi Takairin, 34, was driving when the tsunami hit, and watched cars lifted up and swept away by the water around him.
Advertisement
Elsewhere, snow was falling in the village of Yuriage, when the quake struck. Mayumi Wako, a housewife, told The Times: “I was cleaning up glasses and things which had broken, when I heard someone shout that water was coming. I went to the upper floor, when I heard two people shouting, ‘Help us! Help us!’ from a car outside.
“I let them in as water came in through the door. Now it looks like after a war.” She said that her sister-in-law, nephews and nieces were missing.
Standing in the ruins of her house Yuka Watanabe, 46, said: “There have been strong quakes here before, but we’d never had a tsunami before. My children were here with their grandparents, but when they heard on the radio that there was a tsunami warning, they went upstairs.”
The water was chest-high. “Many people who tried to escape by car got caught,” she said. “There are bodies piling up at the mortuary.”
Otomo Miki was with her husband, three children and their 82-year-old grandfather when the quake hit their home. They managed to get to their car and speed to safety before the tsunami roared through.
Advertisement
“I had to keep zig-zagging around people and water,” she said.“We’ve lost our house and we have no idea what’s going to happen next.”
In Yamamoto, Miyagi prefecture, Eiji and Matsuko Kanno, both 43, were in mourning after finding the body of their 18-year-old daughter, Mizuki, in a crushed vehicle. The parents screamed at police to get her out fast, but officers said that there was nothing they could do due to lack of equipment.