WITNESS: DISASTER IN JAPAN

2011
National Geographic special

Directed by Greg Jacobs & Jon Siskel
Edited by John Farbrother, Angela Hutchinson, Karla Svatos
Producer Sarah Pagura, Stacy Wolff
Music by Steve Mullen, Kent Lambert, Erik Carlson/Area C

National Geographic Channel

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck 75 miles off the northeastern coast of Japan, violently shaking Tokyo more than two hundred miles away.

Almost immediately, tsunami warnings blared, urging residents along Japan’s coast to move to higher ground. For the next several hours, residents watched in stunned horror as a series of massive waves slammed into the coast, inundating entire towns and laying waste to everything in their path. Throughout, amateur videographers, news crews, government agencies, tourists, and countless others were capturing the sights and sounds of the unfolding catastrophe.

Aired just a month after the events took place, Witness: Disaster in Japan weaves together this harrowing footage, reconstructing the earthquake and tsunami as they happened, through the eyes of those who experienced them.