Looking back | 4 years after devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan

A family looks over what is left of its home in the Natori neighborhood hit hard by the tsunami that hit Sendai.  (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Government officials walk along a recently cleared roadway in Kesennuma, where the earthquake-spawned tsunami caused a massive fuel spill and fire further consuming the coastal town, famous for its tuna fishing fleet.  (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A bicycle sticks out of mud and debris in the destroyed Natori neighborhood.  (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

In Natori area of Sendai was completely destroyed by the 2011 tsunami.   (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

A newly homeless resident of Minamisanriku passes through a neighborhood washed away by the tsunami the hit the Japanese coastal town.   (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Much of the town of Kesennuma was destroyed by tsunami. Boats were pushed inland.  (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

A man walks along a Kesennuma harbor road, where the tsunami deposited a ship.  (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

“There is nothing left,” says Meguni Sasaki as she scans the ground, looking for remnants of her home.   (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Fishing boats are left in a pile-up in the northern Japanese city of Kesennuma.   (Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images)

Smoke chokes the badly damaged town of Yamada, Japan, the day after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit the region.  (Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images)

Soldiers search for tsunami victims in the debris as it snows in the town of Otsuchi.  (AFP / Getty Images)

Fishing boats sit grounded on land three years after the disaster in Namie, near the striken nuclear plant in Japan.  (Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP/Getty Images)