I agree. I think the same also happened in the Indonesian 2004 earthquake and tsunami. I find it kind of odd the media just headlined the confirmed death count while putting the much larger missing numbers in smaller print, almost like making them of lesser importance although most of these missing victims likely have also died in the quake and tsunami. Alright, maybe it's one way of lessening the worries of the relatives of the missing. Fair enough.
I wonder how well did the tsunami warning system worked. So far there's no report of the failure of warning system but still it looks like they weren't enough time for the victims to escape from the tsunami. Perhaps, the reason could be because some victims were not trained to respond as quickly as they should.
I believe the people had between 30 seconds to 3 minutes to flee, but running often isn't a top priority after a big earthquake because of aftershocks.
The tsunami made about 1-8 km inland depending on where they were, people with high physical fitness could probably cover 1 km in 3 minutes, but there is the question whether it is physically possible to run 8km in 30 seconds......
I actually believe the Japanese people are probably the most well trained to respond to earthquakes and tsunamis, I dare say any other population would probably have suffered more.
What really surprised me is how the Japanese government only prepared 120,000 bottles of water for the 1.4 million families without water, if Naoto is trying to make an international joke out of himself then it is not funny.
I don't blame the government for settling people near shore because they don't have much choice, but they should at least be prepared to face the consequences.