'Two years are gone but I still feel regret', says Japan tsunami survivor

JAPAN has marked the two-year anniversary of the March 11 tsunami, earthquake and nuclear disaster.

JAPAN has marked the two-year anniversary of the March 11 tsunami, earthquake and nuclear disaster with ceremonies in Tokyo and throughout the affected area of Tohoku.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid tribute yesterday to the almost 19,000 killed in the disaster and the "heartbreaking distress" of survivors. He promised to accelerate relief efforts that have become bogged down in red tape.

"The government will listen to the local voices and work as one," Mr Abe said in a video message.

"Unless spring comes to Tohoku, real spring cannot come to Japan."

Despite the ceremony taking centre-stage yesterday, the interest in the Prime Minister's economic doctrine, dubbed Abenomics, and regional tensions with China and North Korea have taken media focus away from the disaster and its victims recently.

The survivors of the disaster remain deeply critical of the government's response, saying Tokyo appears to have forgotten about their pain.

More than 315,000 people still lack a permanent home and many are residing in cramped, cold temporary housing units.

More than 2600 families are yet to find the remains of their loved ones, who are still listed as "missing" on official records.

About 1400 police officers and Japan Coast Guard officials began an intensive search operation for the bodies of the missing along the Pacific coast yesterday.

At a port in the tsunami-ravaged town of Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture, divers stood facing the sea and offered a silent prayer before the start of the search operation. Nobuki Fujita, 38, who heads a divers' team, said: "We hope to return those missing to their families."

In the city of Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, Michiyuki Kikuchi, 65, who lost his 34-year-old daughter-in-law and a six-year-old grandchild in the disaster, said: "I couldn't help them. Two years are gone, but I still feel regret."

Reconstruction efforts in some towns have been delayed by indecision on the rezoning of waterfront land for housing or lack of funds or government support.

Stress has taken its toll on survivors, with reports of a rise in suicide and studies showing increases in levels of domestic violence.

Work remains hard to find in the affected zones and the area has been buffeted by thousands of aftershocks that bring back awful memories for those who witnessed the magnitude-9 quake and the ensuing tsunami.

Corruption and incompetence have marred the radiation clean-up operations in the region of Fukushima prefecture, home to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

As revealed in The Weekend Australian, workers at the plant say it remains vulnerable to a new quake and tsunami and the temporary systems that cooled it to a point where the government could declare the immediate crisis over are fragile.

The nation remains divided over its energy future with the policy on nuclear power still in a state of flux two years after the tragedy.

Only two of the country's 50 nuclear reactors are operating amid safety fears, although the nuclear-friendly Mr Abe is widely seen as itching to get them restarted to drive down Japan's LNG import bills and trade deficit. Anti-nuclear protests over the weekend leading up to the anniversary drew significant crowds (organisers claimed 40,000) and most Japanese support ending or reducing the country's reliance on atomic energy.

The mayor of Iitate recently said the disaster was a "body blow" to the town, one of the areas heavily affected by the disaster. Iitate was initially not included in the 30km exclusion zone around the plant only to be evacuated weeks later when it was found a plume of fallout from Fukushima had stretched across the village.

Mayor Norio Kanno said the evacuation and the uncertainty over the town's future was affecting its 6000 people.

"People's mental states are wavering it's a very difficult situation that we see," he said.

Additional reporting: agencies