March 2, 1933 Tsunami: Sanriku, Japan

Reference #414:

March 3, 1933, 2:31 [local time]. There was a strong earthquake and catastrophic tsunami with source off the Sanriku Coast. The maximal rise of water was 28 m on this coast, 9 m on the south of Hokkaido Island, and 3 m in the Hawaiian Islands. More than 3,000 residents died in Japan.

More than 6,000 structures and 12,000 ships and boats were washed away and destroyed.

Reference #150:

March 3, 1933, 02:31 [local time], 39.1 N, 144.7 E, depth 10 km, magnitude 8.3 MS. 1,522 deaths, 1,542 unknown, 4,034 houses washed away, 1,817 houses destroyed.

Reference #1006:

March 2, 1933 (March 3, Japanese time). This wave followed a very great earthquake off the eastern, or Sanriku, coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu.

The earthquake damage was moderate, but the tsunami was devastating. In places the waves rose as high as 75 feet.

Miyabe investigated the times of arrival of the waves as recorded on mareograms. At such distant points as San Francisco, Honolulu, Iquique, times of arrival check well enough for a wave starting from the earthquake epicenter at

about the time calculated as origin time from seismograms (which is good to within a very few seconds). However, the times recorded at Japanese tide stations are in part anomalous; at some of the more distant stations the tsunami was actually recorded as beginning 20 minutes earlier than at the nearest ones. This discrepancy may be due in part to seiches started by the seismic waves in the ground; Miyabe prefers to conclude that the tsunami probably did not originate from a point. In so great an earthquake, which almost certainly involved extensive faulting or block movement, this is to be expected. Omote proposes that there was an earlier wave originating around the margin of an area several hundred kilometers wide and a later wave from a more limited source of the order of 10 kilometers in diameter. An interesting detail was the recording at tide stations in Australia and New Zealand of waves, reflected from the American coast, traveling twice across the Pacific in about 47 hours.

Reference #3909:

In Japan there was a great disaster in Iwate province

from both earthquake and tidal wave, with reported loss

of 1535 lives, 2000 wounded, 7930 houses, 1570 boats, and

millions of dollars of property damage at the ports of

Kamaishi, Miyako, Yamoto and Omoto.

Different Reports of Effects

DeathsMissingHouses

Washed AwayHouses

DestroyedReference #Severe damage791,5221,5424,0341,8171503,0006,0004142,9864,0861068