Survivors return to razed memories,despair

Many returning were in tears. One couple said between sobs they were trying to find their elderly mother,whom they had been forced to leave behind. There were many older people,residents said,and many of them were trapped in houses.

Until last week,Natoris farmers had tilled fields of rice in the summer and,in the winter,vegetables in neat white rows of plastic greenhouses,fields that most of the world saw inundated on Friday by a wall of water,mud,cars and wooden debris.

The devastation extends miles inland,so much so that even some evacuation centers were reportedly engulfed. In satellite images,Natori and nearby Yuriage,south of Sendai,seem to have been swept away without a trace,as if a giant razor had shaved the earth clean.

Kayo Miura was in her house when the earthquake struck,knocking her off her feet. About 20 minutes later,she said,she saw a line of cars on her field. Why are those cars parked in the field,she wondered. Then she saw them moving,heard screams about a tsunami coming and froze. Her husband,Ken,ran upstairs just as the waves hit. Inexplicably,in an area where virtually every house was destroyed,theirs held together.

Others told harrowing tales of escape. When Naoko Takahashi,60,and her husband,Hiromichi,64,saw a jumble of cars and burning fuel bearing down on them,they ran as fast as they could,but the menacing wall kept gaining. Not sure what to do,they caught sight of an irrigation tower that was 12 to 15 feet high and scrambled up just in time,joining two others in riding out the flood.

The immediate future of Natori and its residents is undoubtedly grim. Rescue workers have been hampered by quake-damaged roads and debris,enormous traffic jams and fuel shortages. After a spell of relatively mild weather,temperatures were dropping and snow was in the forecast. And even as people picked through what little was left in the rubble,the fires continued to burn.