True

If he could be criticised for anything at all, it would probably be that he didn’t build the wall higher! He was truly ahead of his time, but having witnessed the devastation of previous tsunamis, he knew that even a 15 meter high wall was needed. It makes me wonder what defences have been planned/implemented where there was a 40 meter high wave 🤯

Illustrating the difference between President Donald J Trump and the scumbag Democrat and :"Republican" Politicians whose main concern is their perks and status !!!

Trump is just like Wamura: he wants to build a big wall, too; but fools keep blocking him.

Jane, trump is the biggest crook in Washington.

EVER HEARD OF THE BERLIN WALL WHICH WAS DOUBLE WALLED WITH BARBED WIRE JUNGLES AND MINES IN BETWEEN AND PATROLLED WITH ACTIVE SECURITY MILITARY SQUADS? THAT IS WHERE YOU SHOULD BE SENDING YOUR TROOPS AND NOT IN THE MIDDLE EAST OR IN AFGHANISTAN AND HEAVILY MINED AND BARBED WIRE COVERED AND PATROLLED LIKE THE NORTH-SOUTH KOREAN DMZ ZONE. AND LIKE ISRAEL'S BORDER SECURITY FENCES AND SECURITY WALLS kzfaq.info?search_query=israel+fence+system+

@@janebook294 Nope. Time has told us that Donald J Trump is the most corrupted of all US presidents. Any Democrats are better than him. Democrats are not Traitors like the Republicans.

Amen

I read about this guy Wamura. When he was alive, other politicians labeled him a crackpot. At one point, some people nicknamed the wall project "Wamura's folly" or "Kotaku's folly" (the latter would be more insulting). What posthumous vindication, eh? A crackpot who turned out to be a great visionary. The village of Fudai will be singing his praises for as long as there are people living there. So epic. So very Japanese.

15,5 meters DIFFERENCE! P.S. Wamura remids me Hirai Yosuke (Onagawa NPP director)! Hirai order to build 15 meters wall too! Wall succesfully protect this place compare to Fukushima... P.S2. They are both deceased but did GOOD work before death! Heroes for me!

A leader runs the US now... his opposition are politicians.

Well stated.

Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Ridgway, Richard Ramirez, Aileen Wuornos, and Anthony Sowell all stood alone.

Bet those who thought it a waste of money are having second thoughts right now.

Grithor86 Exactly. You cannot argue with the strange, the weirds, the hypocrites and bad thinkers. Whatever you tell a crowd, they still think you're nuts at doing something like this when they already knew in their own history that they had Tsunamis long before this wall had ever been built. Problem is, when there is a crowd objecting at your ideas, there sure as hell will be a war without thinking that the idea of building this wall may one day save their lives. Well done Mayor Wamura.

Grithor86 Actually, they are probably dead by now as well.

Grithor86 lmuy buena

+amanda miller funny you said that, both Wamura and trump share the goal of building walls :)

Amanda, Trump is trying to clean up the mess left by Marxists like Obama, Clinton and Bush.

David, learn what a Marxist is before using that word and embarrassing yourself.

It would of been great for him to of seen it save the town. But he already knew that; 1. Another event would come, and 2. That his life's work of building this protective wall would save the town! He died knowing he had done what was necessary to protect his town! A great man among the idiots of politics.

see 1933 tsunami this is why with everything you need to look at history

I'VE WATCHED A FEW VIDEOS OF 2011 TSUNAMI. AMAZING POWER OF THE WATER AND IT MOVES QUICKLY. GLAD TO SEE THIS MAYOR PROTECT HIS PEOPLE.

maybe they didn't know how to close the gates and the town was washed away too. This is why no town is shown. What do people think? This happened in my city last year when our city of Calgary Alberta Canada was flooded in it's downtown core. Flood gates weren't closed, and we had a few days warning. oops! Actually I was just joking about this village, but it would still be nice to see the village afterwards.

Peter Hall I just Google Earthed this town and the post-tsunami satellite picture shows the town in perfect condition. 40°00'00.0"N 141°52'58.8"E. The story is true and the documentary is poorly made! (By the way, Google Earthing the tsunami hit areas--and street views too--is an intense experience).

Tiene razón, solo hablan de la muralla y del alcalde y como su previsión al construir la barrera los protegió, pero no muestran el pueblo al otro lado de la barrera???

Led Foll Yeah poorly made.

You can streetview other towns in the area, and see them as they were in 2007, and then 2012

They did. All major coastline town/village currently building an average 14-15 metres height of seawall. To holding back the tsunami. Not just a normal seawall, but the reinforce seawall with high levee. They saw what Wamura did to Fudai and now they applied his idea to the entire Northeastern Coastline

@@fariqhraito They should make it 20 meters high.

[Edited for spelling] If it costs 10,000 times more money than you even have, it becomes a moot point; You just can't achieve the dream. To save some towns would require a wall many miles long, it would destroy the whole reason for the town existing. Why not build an eighty-foot high wall all the way around every single Japanese island? That would be 430 inhabited islands. And should we do this in every single city, berg, village and individual house on the planet? Totally protect every single person on Earth from from every possible catastrophe that could ever happen? Deplete the entire planet's financial (and all other) resources just to say, "If it saves just one life, it will be worth it?" Not only would this be utterly impossible, who would want to live like that? You ask which I would choose. Personally, I prefer to maintain a closer contact with the natural world; sharp edges and all.

jhanthony2 "moot" point. Not mute.

Beau74 OUCH!! Damn, double damn and an order of damn on the side! I knew that. I can't even blame autocorrect for that screw-up.

To you who prefer to keep closer contact with nature. You could. Out side the wall. How much time do you really spend experiencing that nature? We have nature preserving Laws on our Island. Where every year the sea reclaims miles of sea shore cliffs because nature lovers prefer the more natural look. But look at most of them and they spend most time in the big cities as they also prefer the bigger wages.

That is just part of the cost of living on an island in the middle of the Ring of Fire. You could say that people's lives are not worth the expense, or you could say the people should not build or live near the coast, but that would mean the entire population of Japan would be crammed together up in the mountains. Hundreds of square miles would be unusable. This flood wall worked and was relatively inexpensive because of the short size between the hills. Some water did go over it because of the massive inertia of all that water moving forward. If the wall were 500 feet tall some water would still shoot up and over. The only way to stop that would be to curve the wall so that the forward moving water was shot up and back in the direction it came. But still only a small amount of water made it over in that initial rush. Once the water was slowed it could not pour over.

Sendai did. They built a ten meter wall and got hit with a ten meter wave. Problem was, that nobody foresaw, the quake dropped the entire shoreline by a meter or more. So when that ten meter tsunami hit, the wall was actually less than 9 meters above sea level.

I recall reading about that. I guess it is not always possible to foreknow everything that might happen.

Bottle Brush It is possible to overplan for it though. If they had built a 15 meter wall like this one, Sendai may have survived. We had the same problem in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. It wasn't that the hurricane was that bad, it was that the flood barriers weren't built high enough even though it was a known problem for decades. It only took one weak spot in the wall failing to flood half the city.

I feel for them all.

+Jacky siang i am sure he would not seek vindication given the destruction that was caused throughout.

+Jorge Moscol Exactly.. He would probably wish he had tried to convince many of the other coastal towns and villages to build seawalls as well..

IIRC the christain god was rather fond of drowning people

+Wyn Williams lol true

i agree...it would have made for a dramatic conclusion after all the images of devastation...to show the contrast...at the very end the village that was saved...

try google earth

You can find it on Google maps / Earth.

There are more pics in the video titled El Hombre que Salvó 3000 Vidas desde la Tumba, but still no village pics I think.

Just go to Google Maps.

NY city isn't even prepared for tsunami and it's a tiny island sitting right on the ocean.

The Tinfoil Tricorn This entire country is too stupid to prepare for anything. I hate to be ugly, but we are going to get what we deserve, for being so lax about protecting ourselves, from anything from natural disasters to terror attacks. Hate it for the offended idiots, but yep, it's every one of our faults for not demanding better protection. Good luck folks. It's just a matter of time.

+itsnotthesamething im not sure i would becso bold as to agree with you. you are saying because we have sinned against God we deserve it? are you homophobic?

Konkey Dog Doggy Style I've looked over my posts again and again. I don't see where I called anyone a sinner. I said the people, our leaders and us, deserve what we get, for not demanding better security and protection for this country. I wonder what the levee system looks like in NOLA these days? Probably not much better than in 2005.

Konkey Dog Doggy Style​ I'll say it I'm not afraid of a gay person but I will say it's a sin against God and a corruption of a moral society, backsliding into the habits of failed cultures like the Greeks and Romans is not progress. As to deserving things, if you create a society which people are apathetic about saving because they would sooner save themselves then the radical deviant psychos down the street. Then in the end the society gets just what it deserves, don't ask from an immoral position in a state of no desire for forgiveness and expect people to vote their resources to protect you... Heck the image of the military being gay and transgendered certainly plays a role in people really not caring if it funded or not since it's merely a political pawn in a state adopted idologies of sex. No matter how it's spun as being innocent the fact is it's origins in Berkeley show exactly where so called immoral freedoms lead especially when state enforced ideologies. 

Yes, but the Galveston seawall is tiny compared to this one, and hurricane Ike (2008) easily pushed the sea over it and swamped the city. If you've never read the book "Isaac's Storm" I highly recommend it; it is a well-written, and sad, true account of the great Galveston hurricane of 1900.

The point I was trying to get across was ppl died first before Galveston decided to build a wall and in this city it's the opposite.. And thanks I will look into that book

Tsuyoku arigato, Wamura sensei.

They had in many places build tsunami defences. But the fault caused the whole shoreline to drop apparently by about 1.5 meters. Plus the quake was a size 9. Big quake.

see one person with conviction CAN get the job done.What a great story

God didnt do it, the mayor did. If you are gonna thank god for him you also have to blame him (god) for the tsunami to begin with... /smh

The whole point about this story is that Mayor Wamura didn't sit about thanking God for things. He did something himself. People die when they complacently think they don't need to do anything because God will protect them.

LOL what a load of disrespectful BOLLOCKS :D

MUHAHAHAHHA! studies show the 'religiously observant' are more likely to have outdated, oppressive, shitty ideas you mean... there is no evidence for fucking gods and YOU say you're acquainted with one? have lunch together do you? incredibly arrogant to suggest you know the mind of your god which also directly contradicts your myth book