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Remembering Japan’s 2011 tsunami victims
People all over Japan bowed their heads in silence as they remembered the almost 19,000 people who died when a tsunami surged ashore two years earlier.
Relatives pay tribute to victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami during a national memorial service in Tokyo on March 11, 2013.
Junji Kurokawa
Two years ago at 2:26 p.m., an undersea megathrust 9.0 magnitude earthquake rumbled in the Pacific Ocean, and soon a tsunami struck Japan's northeast, carrying away homes and cars like broken debris.
On Monday, people in Tokyo and in towns across Japan bowed their heads in a moment of silence for the people they lost.
"I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said.