The confirmed death toll from the March 11 disaster reached 15,413 as of Saturday, although 13 per cent, or about 2000 bodies, have yet to be identified, the National Police Agency, says. Another 8069 people remain missing.

Three months down the road and there are still eight thousand people missing. That’s heartbreaking.

More understandable, perhaps, is that only 22 percent of the overall debris has been cleared. Japan’s a relatively small country with a lot of farmland. They need to regenerate the productivity of that swamped land, so they can’t dump what amounts to deconstruction rubbish on it.

It’s hard to imagine.