09 Ghosts of the Tsunami (Richard Lloyd Parry)

Episode nine of the Japan Station podcast is here and this time we're talking about the devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan's Tohoku region on March 11, 2011. Richard Lloyd Parry is an award-winning foreign correspondent, the Asia Editor at The Times of London in Tokyo, and author of the book Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone. In this episode we talk about the experiences of people that lived through the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the tragedy at Okawa Elementary School where 74 of the 78 students present when the tsunami struck died, the reports of possessions and ghosts that arose in the months after the tsunami, whether Japanese society has learned anything from this tragedy, and more. Note: In the episode Richard states that Okawa Elementary School is four miles away from the coast. It appears he mistakenly said miles instead of kilometers because all information found online indicates that Okawa Elementary School, which is now a memorial, is roughly 4-5 kilometers from the coast.