Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he is sending 50,000 troops for the rescue and recovery efforts following Friday's 8.9-magnitude quake that unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed — a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields, smashing towns, airports and highways in its way.
The official death toll stood at 413, while 784 people were missing and 1,128 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area near the quake's epicenter. An untold number of bodies were also believed to be lying in the rubble and debris. Rescue workers had yet to reach the hardest-hit areas.
"Unfortunately, we must be prepared for the number to rise greatly," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Saturday.
Japanese media quoted local officials as saying the death toll was expected to top 1,000 as authorities tried to reach the hardest-hit areas.
More than 215,000 people were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, or states, the national police agency said. Since the quake, more than 1 million households have not had water, mostly concentrated in northeast.
Kan said a total of 190 military planes and 25 ships have been sent to the area.
"Most of houses along the coastline were washed away, and fire broke out there," he said after inspecting the quake area in a helicopter. "I realized the extremely serious damage the tsunami caused."
Adding to the worries was the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where two reactors had lost cooling ability.
Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land, with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.
The earthquake that struck off the northeastern shore ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.
Edano said an initial assessment found "enormous damage."
Police said 200-300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area. Authorities said they weren't able to reach the area because of damage to the roads.
For more than two terrifying, seemingly endless minutes Friday afternoon, the quake shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrapers. Then came the devastating tsunami that washed far inland over fields and smashed towns.
The town of Rikuzentakada, population 24,700, in northern Iwate prefecture, looked largely submerged in muddy water, with hardly a trace of houses or buildings of any kind.
The entire Pacific had been put on alert — including coastal areas of South America, Canada and Alaska — but waves there were not as bad as expected.
Residents in Miyagi prefecture, who spent the night on top of a building, were rescued Saturday morning, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.
"I was unable stay on my feet because of the violent shaking," a woman with a baby on her back told television in northern Japan. "The aftershocks gave us no reprieve, then the tsunami came when we tried to run for cover."
In one of the worst-hit residential areas, people buried under rubble could be heard calling out "Help" and "When are we going to be rescued?", the Kyodo news agency reported hours after the quake and tsunami. Rescuers were having a hard time reaching areas due to destroyed roads.
TV footage showed fires engulfing a large waterfront area in northeastern Japan. Houses and other buildings caught fire across large swathes of land in Kesennuma, near Sendai.
Kyodo reported that contact was lost with four trains along the northeast coast.
In one town alone on the northeastern coast, Minami-soma, some 1,800 houses were destroyed or badly ravaged, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said.
A second, magnitude 6.6 quake struck central Japan along the northwest coast around 4 a.m. local time on Saturday, causing buildings to sway.
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