By TOMOKO A. HOSAKA
Associated Press
FUDAI, Japan – In the rubble of Japan’s northeast coast, one small village stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet.
Fudai is the village that survived – thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor’s expensive folly and now vindicated as the community’s salvation.
The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one.