Silent Waves: The Total Erasure of the Sanriku Coast

On a calm summer evening in 1896, villagers along the northeastern coast of Japan felt a faint, slow tremor. Because the shaking was so weak, no one panicked or fled to higher ground. What they did not know was that a massive magnitude 8.5 earthquake had just ruptured deep within the Japan Trench. This was a rare "e;tsunami earthquake"e; a seismic event that generates very little ground shaking ...