TOKYO—Some residents along the Japanese northern coast stood on roadsides overlooking the sea, offering silent prayers for their loved ones lost in a massive earthquake and tsunami nine years ago Wednesday. But in Tokyo and many other places around Japan, the day was being remembered without a main government ceremony due to the coronavirus outbreak.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated large swaths of Japan’s northern coast and triggered a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, contaminating large areas and dislocating many residents.
