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| from AP Images |
Millions of people faced a fourth night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures in devastated areas in the north-east.
According to public broadcaster NHK, about 430,000 people are living in emergency shelters or with relatives, while another 24,000 are stranded.
People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls while dealing with the loss of loved ones and homes.
"People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming," said Mr Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate prefecture, one of the three hardest-hit, along with Miyagi and Fukushima.
He said the authorities were receiving only 10 per cent of the food and other supplies they need. Body bags and coffins were running so short the government may turn to foreign funeral homes for help, he said.
About 1,000 washed-up bodies were found scattered yesterday across the coastline of Miyagi prefecture, according to a Japanese police official.
The discovery raised the official death toll to about 2,800 but the Miyagi police chief has said that more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone, which has a population of 2.3 million.
PLIGHT OF SICK AND ELDERLY
There are no figures yet on how many hospitals were ravaged but few could have escaped unscathed given the scale of the destruction.
Senen General Hospital in Takajo town, near Miyagi prefecture's capital of Sendai, had about 200 patients when the earthquake hit, tossing its medical equipment around as part of the ceiling in one wing collapsed. Eighty patients who could be moved were sent to a nearby shelter.
All of the hospital's food and medicine, stored on the first floor, was ruined or lost in the 30 minutes when Takajo, a small town of about 12,000, was flooded by the tsunami.
The nurses have been cutting open soiled intravenous packs and scrubbing down muddy packs of pills with alcohol to clean them.
Mr Sam Taylor, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, an international group that has sent a team to Japan, said there were longer-term concerns about the elderly, many of whom are fragile and may be living on little food and water and without their life-saving medicine.
"They have some medicines for the immediate future but, in the coming weeks, that's when it really could become an issue," he said.
UNCERTAINTY IN TOKYO
Commuters and residents in the Japanese capital also faced confusion and uncertainty over the supply of food and power. Some store shelves were emptied and many train lines were shut down as Tokyo commuters returned to work yesterday.
In the largely residential Nerima district of Tokyo, staples like rice, bread and instant noodles were sold out. Lights were kept off on the produce shelves and meat refrigeration units to conserve electricity.
Mr Tsutomu Yamane, a manager of a branch at the Tokyo metropolitan government that oversees retailers, said officials were trying to assess the situation.
"A food shortage is difficult to handle from an administrative view," he said. "But what we can do is try and prevent retailers from cornering the market or hoarding goods (to raise prices)."
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