Village unscathed by tsunami - thanks to mayor’s ‘crazy idea’
WHEN the mayor of the Japanese coastal village of Fudai ordered a 51ft-high wall built in the 1970s to protect his people from the potential ravages of a tsunami, he was called crazy, foolish and wasteful.
But after Fudai survived the monster wave that followed the 11 March earthquake unscathed, he is now regarded as a saviour.
The 3,000 residents of Fudai, living between mountains behind a cove, owe their lives to the late mayor Kotaku Wamura, who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four decades in office to defend the village from the next one.