Japan marks 1 year from quake-tsunami disaster, nuclear crisis

Japan marked the one-year anniversary Sunday of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country’s northeastern region, left around 19,000 people dead or missing, and triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Memorial services will be held in three northeastern prefectures hit hard by the tsunami — Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima — as well as in Tokyo and elsewhere on Sunday, with a moment of silence planned across the country at 2:46 p.m., the time the magnitude-9.0 quake occurred exactly a year earlier.

Emperor Akihito, who is recuperating from heart bypass surgery, will attend a government-sponsored memorial ceremony at the National Theater in central Tokyo along with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and representatives of those who lost their family members in the natural disasters.