Ian Williams / NBC News

Debris piled high against a marooned tuna fishing ship in Kesennuma Port, Japan.

OTSUCHI, Japan – A seemingly endless line of trucks rumble through the remains of Kamaishi Port, laden with twisted debris from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. They empty their load at the foot of a fast-growing mountain of debris, shaped and groomed by a fleet of diggers.

A man in a hard hat and face mask was supervising the trucks, and I asked him how long it would take to clear the rubble.

He shrugged. “It’s going to take some time,” he said. “Maybe two years; this is only the beginning.”

Nearby a salvage company was picking metal from a pile that had been separated from the main mountain. Others were draining oil from a tuna fishing ship that had been marooned inland.

Japan's Environment Ministry estimates there are 25 million tons of debris scattered along the coast, mainly from collapsed buildings. The figure doesn't include cars or boats, or radioactive debris in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
They say it could take up to five years to remove and dispose of it all, though even that seems optimistic as officials can't say exactly where it will go, and the rubble is a potential environmental and health nightmare.

One of the biggest fears is of asbestos, once used widely in the construction industry here. Tiny asbestos particles when inhaled can increase the risk of lung cancer, and other lung disorders.

Ian Williams / NBC News

A machine works in the debris mountain at Kesennuma Port, Japan.

Experts fear that with warmer, drier weather, and as the debris is moved and cleared, dust will rise and the risk will grow.
One activist recently told The Associated Press: "There are people not even wearing masks. This is like a suicidal act."
The authorities say they will set up a series of new incinerators to burn debris, but there are fears about harmful emissions from burning wood saturated with sea water.

Just outside the city of Sendai, several other debris mountains were taking shape, with diggers excavating vast round holes in which to put it. But local authorities all along the coast say they are short of space in which to build either debris mountains or holes to bury it. They say they are sorting the debris as best they can, but there is simply too much of it.

In many devastated coastal communities, the authorities are facing conflicting pressures: on the one hand to quickly clean up and re-house the survivors (preferably on higher ground) and on the other to be as sensitive as positive to the possibility of finding bodies and valuable possessions.

Almost 11,000 people are still missing.

Ian Williams / NBC News

Vehicles have not been counted in the estimate of 25 million tons of debris littered along Japan's coast.

We witnessed the more sensitive approach in Otsuchi, a coastal town almost wiped out by the tsunami. The town is the sister city of Fort Bragg, Calif., a fishing town (not the bigger Fort Bragg in North Carolina). Soldiers from Japan's self defense were not only carefully checking for bodies, but also collecting photographs from the wrecks of houses – almost a quarter of a million of them so far, a quarter of a million memories as they put it.

"For them, this is everything. It is all they have got now," said one young woman supervising the photos, which are displayed for people to collect.

"We need to take care," said Ken Sasaki, a town official. "It takes time to do that."

Only after carefully checking through the debris is it piled into heaps with a red flag indicating it is good for clearing, to be taken to one of the growing mountains.

When we left Sendai, we took the newly restored bullet train back to Tokyo. The authorities are rightly proud of getting the service up and running again after making about 1,500 repairs from quake damage. They see it as another sign of the return to normality.

But for a reminder of the real challenges the region still faces, one only needs to peer across the green fields as the train picks up speed outside Sendai.

There they are: more mounds of debris fast becoming mountains.

Courtesy of Shelley Fredrickson

Montgomery "Monty" Dickson, 26, "loved it there in Japan. He loved the students and he loved all the culture," says his sister, Shelley Fredrickson.

The body of a popular American teacher known as "Monty-san" has been found in the tiny coastal Japanese town where he worked, more than three weeks after the country was rocked by a powerful earthquake and devastating tsunami, his sister said Wednesday.

“We’ve got a big hole in our universe here,” said Shelley Fredrickson, a 44-year-old sales representative from Anchorage, Alaska, adding that the family was not accepting the confirmation of the death of her brother, Montgomery Dickson, officially until they travel to Japan, "for our own peace of mind."

The family received an email from the U.S. Consulate in Japan on Monday saying that police had recovered his body in the town of Rikuzentakata, said Gloria Shriver, Fredrickson's mother-in-law. Dickson's girlfriend, Naoko, then went to Rikuzentakata and identified his body.

The family knows little about the circumstances of Dickson's death. The last one to speak to the 26-year-old known as Monty was Naoko, whom he called after his students had evacuated from the school where he was teaching. Following evacuation procedure, Dickson -- a teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) -- then headed to the Board of Education office on the third floor at City Hall, which was believed to be a safe haven. Instead, it was overrun by the tsunami generated by the powerful earthquake that struck offshore.

"They said his body was found a full kilometer away from the building ... and it was lucky that they found him," said Fredrickson. "Out of the 25 people that were at the Board of Education office, only five of them survived, and out of the 20 that were missing, only three of them were found so far.

"My intention is always to bring him home, regardless -- I need to bring him home."

Dickson is the second American confirmed by the U.S. State Department to have died in the disaster in Japan, out of 12,554 confirmed deaths. The other American fatality, 24-year-old Taylor Anderson of Richmond, Va., also was a JET teacher.

Rikuzentakata was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami. An International Medical Corps team that visited soon afterward said it “was completely destroyed by the tsunami and no persons were present. Showing the depth of the tsunami wave and extent of the destruction, water marks were observed at a height of up to 10 meters (nearly 33 feet) on the sides of hills."

Fredrickson said she and other relatives plan to travel to Japan to claim his body and return it to his native Alaska.

"The Japanese they want to hurry up and cremate and get moving forward," she said. "I don't want to just receive a box of ashes at the airport. What closure do I have that this is my brother? We want to be a part of the process, I suppose, and have our own confirmation, our own closure ... and know that we're accompanying him home."

Dickson, whose parents died at different times when he was a child, lived with Fredrickson in his late teens. She said he always worked hard in school to make his mother proud, excelling in academics, and continued to strive for academic achievement after her death -- finishing among the top of his class in high school and at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he received a bachelor's degree in language with an emphasis in Japanese.

The search had been a full-time operation for the family, and they were only able to plan usually a day ahead, Fredrickson said. They had family in England and Hawaii helping to post word online about his disappearance, and they had been in touch with several U.S. agencies and Japanese authorities about the search.

“He loved it there in Japan. He loved the students and he loved all the culture … He always called me or wrote through emails the joy he had of living there, and I know it was a place he wanted to be. I know he lived the life that he wanted,” she said. But, “he had a lot of goals still left to fulfill and … (his life) was cut too short.”

Despite the lack of word from Dickson, who loved to compete in bike races, friends and family hadn't given up hope of finding him safe.

A hot dog vendor in Anchorage held a fundraiser on Monday -- the same day police phoned to say they had recovered his body -- called "Monty Monday," with proceeds going to support the search effort.

"It was so touching to have had that going on, waiting for confirmation," Fredrickson said, adding that she didn't even tell anyone that his body may have been located because she was hanging on to the last bit of hope. “I still didn’t want to believe it."

She said many of her brother's friends were posting messages on his Facebook page, to which their brother, Ian Dickson, was responding.

“We were all hoping that he'd be found on a mountain top, or shelter, or to simply come striding out of the rubble. This is not the case,” Dickson wrote, noting that he had been trying to find “words of solace.”

“I guess there is a peace in knowing this is part of the human condition. We all live, and we all die. If we are lucky we have a happy life. Monty's life was happy.”

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Courtesy of Shelley Fredrickson

American teacher Monty Dickson, a teacher in the small Japanese coastal village of Rikuzentakata, has not been seen since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan.

Almost everyone in the town of Rikuzentakata on Japan’s northeast coast knew teacher Montgomery Dickson, or “Monty-san,” as the locals call him.

But the tall American hasn't been heard from since the March 11 quake and tsunami slammed the northeastern coast of the island nation, and any surviving villagers in the town of 23,000 who might have spotted his familiar face apparently have left. An International Medical Corps team that visited Rikuzentakata in the wake of the double disaster found it “was completely destroyed by the tsunami and no persons were present. Showing the depth of the tsunami wave and extent of the destruction, water marks were observed at a height of up to 10 meters (nearly 33 feet) on the sides of hills.”

But Dickson's family and friends are holding out hopes that Dickson, who competed in bike races and joked with his family in Alaska about knowing the area so well that he gave directions to the locals, somehow survived the carnage, said his sister, Shelley Fredrickson, a 44-year-old sales representative in Anchorage.

"We still have hope, we haven’t given up hope by any means of finding him,” she said.

The last one to speak to the 26-year-old Dickson, known as Monty, was his girlfriend, whom he called after his students had evacuated the school where he was teaching. Following evacuation procedure, Dickson -- a teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET) -- then went to the board of education office on the third floor at City Hall as a safe haven.

“When the tsunami hit, all contact with him was gone," Fredrickson said. "We found out that the tsunami was much larger than anybody ever predicted. It went over the third floor of the building where he was. So, that news was very ... damaging to us as a family.”

Overall, some 13,800 people are still listed as missing in the quake and tsunami, in addition to more than 9,200 confirmed deaths, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. So far, Taylor Anderson, a 24-year-old JET teacher from Richmond, Va., is the only American known to have died in the tragedy, according to the U.S. State Department, which said it was looking into several other reports of missing Americans. 

Fredrickson said she and her brother have family in England and Hawaii who are helping to post word online about Dickson's disappearance, and they have been in touch with several U.S. agencies and Japanese authorities. She said U.S. consular officials went to the town last week to bring supplies and search -- checking shelters and the morgue –- but found no sign of him.

“You think that if he was walking around helping people -- everybody did know him and he does stand out -- that we would have heard word that somebody would have seen him,” she said. "We all put ourselves on Japanese time so that we can be awake when search crews were there."

His girlfriend also went to Rikuzentakata a few days ago with her brother to search for him. “She couldn’t find anything. She couldn’t find his apartment, she couldn't find his belongings, she couldn't find him,” she said.

One of Dickson's friends, fellow teacher Noriyasu Li, created a profile for him on the Google person finder application.

“Monty's a very outgoing, bright, and hardworking individual,” Li, who met Dickson when they studied together in Alaska before they joined the JET program in Japan in 2009, wrote to msnbc.com. “I believe he worked very hard as a teacher. His advanced Japanese skills must have also paid off, as I heard he was very well spoken in the community of Rikuzentakata ... and connected well with his students. Overall he is a fantastic individual, and I can only hope and pray that he is still somewhere surviving.”

Dickson, whose parents died at different times when he was a child, lived with Fredrickson in his late teens. She said he always worked hard in school to make his mother proud, excelling in academics, and continued to strive for academic achievement after her death -- finishing among the top of his class in high school and at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he received a bachelor's degree in language with an emphasis in Japanese.

She said he was a "good kid" with a good sense of humor who had first gotten interested in Japanese culture through video games, and then studied Japanese throughout his education, including spending about two years in the country as a student. He arrived in Japan in August 2009 as a JET teacher, and had planned on teaching there for three years. JET said he is the last of their teachers who is still missing.

Fredrickson said she didn't know if the family would go to Japan to look for him.

"It’s really hard because, we’re going to find him. What capacity, we don’t know," she said.

Courtesy of the Anderson family

The body of Taylor Anderson, left, a 24-year-old teacher, has been found in Japan, her family says. She was last seen in Ishinomaki, Japan, on March 11 after the earthquake.

An  American family  was in mourning Monday after  learning that their daughter and sibling, a teacher and lifelong student of Japanese culture,  had been found dead in Japan –- the first known American victim of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Taylor Anderson, a 24-year-old from Richmond, Va., had lived in Japan since August 2008. She was last seen after the powerful earthquake struck Japan on March 11, riding her bike away from the school where she taught after helping to get her students home.

“It is with deep regret that we inform you that earlier this morning we received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Japan that they had found our beloved Taylor's body,” the Anderson family wrote in a statement. “We would like to thank all those (whose)  prayers and support have carried us through this crisis.  Please continue to pray for all who remain missing and for the people of Japan.”

 Anderson’s family, who had mounted a long-distance search for Anderson, could not immediately be reached for comment.

But a Facebook poster, who gave his name as Ramon Badcock, said he met Anderson in Japan and will remember her positive spirit.

"She was of a rare breed of people, always happy and positive, kind and generous, with a smile that seemed to go on forever," he wrote in an email to msnbc.com. "I will mourn, but more importantly I will celebrate her life, for it was a beautiful life and I know she would prefer that."

Until Monday's announcement, none of the estimated 50,000-plus Americans living in or visiting Japan when the quake hit had been confirmed killed. The U.S. State Department said it was seeking further information regarding the death.

Most of Taylor’s friends and colleagues in the JET Programme (the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme), stayed at their schools overnight after the quake, but not Taylor, said her sister, Julia Anderson.

Courtesy of the Anderson family

Taylor Anderson with her parents, mother Jean and father Andy.

“Taylor helped in the evacuation of the students onto the athletic field, waited for parents to pick up the students and whoever was leftover went to higher ground. Taylor decided to go back to her apartment, but by her bike, and so we know she left her school and that’s the last we know,” Anderson said  late last week.

“Shortly thereafter, the tsunami warning sirens started to sound," her father, Andy, a 53-year-old real estate developer, said last week. “She probably had 10, 15 minutes of bike riding before the water hit.”

Taylor, who was living in Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture, started learning Japanese when she was in middle school, and eventually minored in Asian Studies at college. When she left for Japan, the departure was emotional but the family was proud of her. 

“She was living the life that she always wanted and she was getting to know a culture she was always fascinated with,” Julia said last week. “Her students loved her.”

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints

Patrick Hiltbrand, American missionary in Japan.

It was faith that landed Patrick Hiltbrand in the path of a tsunami last week, but arguably it was also his faith that got him out —as he survived the deluge in the upper floor of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the small town of Tagajo.  Despite the ordeal he has survived, he so far has no intention of leaving Japan soon, and that too has to do with his religious convictions.

“Right now, I’m here in Japan for two years to serve God,” said the 20-year-old speaking from a mission in Sapporo. He is determined to return to the disaster zone to help with recovery, but awaits instruction: “My (mission) leaders are receiving guidance from God,” he said.

For members of the Mormon church, going on “mission” is a rite of passage. At any given moment there are about 52,000 Mormon missionaries working around the world — most of them between 19 and 21 years old. In order to remain focused of their religious work, they are asked not to watch television, follow the news or call their families and friends. On their one day off a week, they can write letters or email.

Hiltbrand, from Pocatello, Idaho, is the third son in the family to go on mission, but the first to be sent overseas. Being chosen for Japan was "beyond his wildest dreams," said his mom, Corrie Hiltbrand. He had been evangelizing in Sendai area of Japan for about 15 months when the quake struck.

Dressed in the standard issue white-shirt-and-tie, he and his “companion” Yuji Aiura — Mormon missionaries always travel in pairs — had arrived by bicycle to a small restaurant in Tagajo, a river town about two miles from the ocean.

They were discussing the power of God with two local Japanese when the shaking began. They ignored it at first says Hiltbrand — there are so many small quakes in this region — but not for long.

The growing fury of the rumbling drove them to take shelter under a table. Then they decided to run outside.

“There was a loud bang and everything was moving in every direction,” Hiltbrand says. “Cars were rocking on the street.”

When it stopped, the two missionaries jumped on their bikes and rode to check on their apartment, then headed to the Mormon church in Tagajo, dodging newly created crevices and open manholes.

Along the way, Hiltbrand registered the shock and fear on faces all around him, wracking his brain for the right course of action.

“As we started toward the church I turned to my companion and said ‘our job today is to help people be happy as we can,'” said Hiltbrand. “I tried to smile and say hi to everyone.”

It is in Hiltbrand's character  to try to cheer people, said his mother. She describes him as tough in the face of adversity, outgoing and enthusiastic about whatever task is at hand. Right before leaving on mission, the electronics student needed to make some money—and the only job he could get was standing on a corner wearing a big sign for a local pizza joint.

“He stood on a street corner flipping and spinning that sign. He never stopped moving,” said Corrie Hiltbrand. “He said, ‘If this is what I have to do for my job, then I’m going to go all out,’ and that’s what Patrick does.”

Any illusion that the disaster was over quickly passed as traffic built—with cars heading inland toward Sendai. Then police and fire vehicle sirens began blaring tsunami warnings.

Patrick Hiltbrand

The scene in Tagajo, Japan, about 2 miles from the coast, after the tsunami swept through the city.

Hiltbrand and Aiura climbed to the second story of the church, a building that is raised 4 to 5 feet off the ground.

The watched out the window as the water level rose rapidly, aided by the river that wraps around the town—and sucked their bicycles into a torrent, along with cars and debris.

Water began pouring through the church’s mail slot in the door of the first floor.

“From the second floor it sounded like a waterfall,” said Hiltbrand. “I went downstairs, and as I watched it coming in … the glass on the door shattered and water came pouring in.”

The water rose to about four feet before it started to subside he said.

It was 20 hours before the young missionaries could venture outside. They were not able to go to the emergency meeting site designated by their mission because they were isolated on the wrong side of the swollen river. There was no cell service to get instruction from higher-ups at the church.

“It was a real ‘what do I do’ moment,” Hiltbrand said in a matter-of-fact voice. “(Aiura) said, ‘We need to get to Sendai,'” about 20 miles away.

They trudged through standing water, navigating through the piles of cars and wreckage. Japanese residents were also wading through the remaining water, some carrying elderly family members on their backs.

A local church member driving toward Tagajo from Sendai spotted Hiltbrand and Aiura as he neared the town. He turned around them and drove them to the unscathed mission in Sendai city, about 24 hours after the quake. 

The church has since moved all 200 of its young evangelists from Tokyo and the Sendai area to missions they believe to be a safe distance from the radiation leak at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

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Hiltbrand is now at a mission in Sapporo — on the northern island of Hokkaido. On Friday he and other evacuees were getting health evaluations and briefings on the full scope of the disaster, including the radiation leaking from Fukushima — a crisis that has prompted the U.S. government to offer U.S. citizens evacuation from Japan.

Hiltbrand said he has no thought of going back to Utah early. And his mother said she is 100 percent supportive of his plans—even after a tense and prayer-filled 24 hours of uncertainty about her son’s survival.

“(To ask) for him to come home never even went through our minds,” she said. “Patrick is where he has planned to be all his life…. We knew he was where needed to be and when we heard from him that he had been protected.  And we know that he will be protected.”

For his part, Hiltbrand is itching to get back to the disaster zone.

“I really want to be in Tagajo helping people,” he says. “I have many friends in Tagajo and I don’t know how they are. I don’t know how they will clean it all up and I want to help.”

But, as senior leaders of the LDS church told msnbc.com earlier in the week, the missionaries, although enthusiastic, may be more of a burden than a help at this stage.

So Hiltbrand waits until the church says it is OK for him to change his mission — from saving souls to salvaging lives.

“All I know is I’m now in Sapporo because I’m supposed to be,” he said.

STR / AFP - Getty Images

Chinese shoppers crowd a shop in an effort to buy salt in Lanzhou, northwest China's Gansu province on Thursday.

BEIJING – China is in the midst of a salt rush.

Despite the Chinese government’s effort to educate the population and reassure them they will not be exposed to radiation from the nuclear plant in northern Japan, many fearful Chinese have come to believe baseless rumors that the iodine in salt could save them from radiation sickness – so they are hoarding iodized salt.
 
The frantic buying has left grocery shelves empty of salt in China’s coastal provinces, just across the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea from Japan. But the panic is spreading quickly westwards to the country’s inland where salt sales are catching up at a crazy speed.
 
“April Gourmet,” a chain supermarket frequented by Beijing’s expatriate community, told NBC News that its salt supply was sold out as of Thursday morning.  “I’m not sure when we’ll have salt again because our suppliers’ stocks have been sold out, too and now the price is higher. Even the soy sauce is sold out by customers who worry they won’t have salt for cooking,” Ms. Zhao, a public relations manager for the store said in a phone interview.

“Merry Mart,” another big Chinese supermarket chain favored by older Beijingers, also reported that all the salt was sold out.
The spike in demand may be due to the misunderstanding of reports that note the thyroid gland is susceptible to radioactive iodine – just one of several types of radiation that could be produced by the crippled reactors – and that potassium iodide tablets can block the radioactive iodine if taken before exposure.

STRINGER SHANGHAI / Reuters

A policeman tries to maintain order as residents line up outside a salt wholesale market to buy salt after it was sold out at local supermarkets in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China on Thursday.

Salt containing iodine, however, would not shield against the radiation, medical experts say, adding that there was no reason for alarm in China, which is thousands of miles away from the damaged reactors.
 
On Taobao.com, China’s largest online business-to-business platform, some sellers from coastal provinces are even promoting their products by advertising, “Buy one, get one bag of salt free.” On the Sina microblog, a Twitter-like message sharing site, “salt” has become the most frequently discussed word and people from all over the country are reporting on how the panic buying has caused shortages in their hometowns.

Meantime, nuclear scientists have repeatedly explained on TV that even if a nuke explosion did take place, the level of radiation that could spread to China’s coastal cities would be diluted to a minor extent and simply taking salt would not help preventing damage.

Fang Zhouzi, a Beijing-based scientist famous for educating the public about scientific facts, wrote in his microblog that “you’d have to take 5-13 pounds of salt to have enough iodine to resist the radiation.” The Chinese government has also set-up telephone hotlines and web sites that address the public’s concerns about possible radioactivity from Japan.
 
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's economic policy agency, has also warned consumers about price gauging and has encouraged them not to give into the fear mongering. "Don't believe rumors, don't spread rumors, and don't panic buy," said the NDRC in an emailed statement, Reuters reported.

LIU JIN / AFP - Getty Images

People get bottles of soy sauce, which contains iodine, from the supermarket after salt sold out due to panic buying in Beijing on Thursday.

Still, the Chinese government’s education efforts seem to have done very little to deter people’s determination to hoard salt. News keep pouring in about how salt is sold out everywhere, and the China Salt Industry Corp., China’s biggest state-owned salt producer, continues to promise citizens a stable market will be back soon and that therea are ample reserves.
 
Meantime, China announced on Wednesday that it will readjust and amend mid- and long-term development plans for nuclear power. The State Council announced that approval for all new nuclear power plants, including those in preliminary development, will be temporarily suspended until safety standards are revised and strengthened.