Unsolved Mysteries depicts, on March 11, 2011, an earthquake caused a massive tsunami that hit the Tōhoku region of Northeastern Japan, and in its wake it stole nearly 20,000 lives.
In Ishinomaki, a town within the region, the trauma was intense and immediate. No one had been prepared for the scale of the disaster.
The tsunami reached 131 feet at its peak; it swept away not only thousands of people but their homes and memories, too—photographs, books and altars.
And though the episode doesn't mention it, the fallout only got worse from there: The earthquake triggered a nuclear meltdown at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi reactors, the most severe such meltdown since Chernobyl.
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