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TOKYO – The tsunami from the deadly earthquake in Chile hit Japan's main islands and even reached the shores of Russia on Sunday, but the smaller-than-expected waves didn't cause significant damage. Hawaii and other Pacific islands in their path were also spared.
In Japan, where hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from shorelines, the biggest wave following the magnitude-8.8 quake off Chile hit the northern island of Hokkaido. It was four feet (1.2 meters) high. There were no immediate reports of damage, though some piers were briefly flooded.
Japanese weather agency officials kept their alert up well into Sunday evening, saying further waves could be on their way.
As the waves crossed the Pacific, they dealt populated areas — including the U.S. state of Hawaii — just glancing blows.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its warning for every country but Russia and Japan, though some countries in Asia and the Pacific were keeping their own watches in place as a precaution.
The tsunami raised fears the Pacific could fall victim to the type of devastating waves that killed 230,000 people in the Indian Ocean in 2004 the morning after Christmas. During that disaster, there was little-to-no warning and much confusion about the impending waves.
Officials said the opposite occurred after the Chile quake: They overstated their predictions of the size of the waves and the threat.
"We expected the waves to be bigger in Hawaii, maybe about 50 percent bigger than they actually were," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist for the warning center. "We'll be looking at that."
Japan, fearing the tsunami could gain force as it moved closer, put all of its eastern coastline on tsunami alert and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents in low-lying areas to seek higher ground as waves generated by the Chilean earthquake raced across the Pacific at hundreds of miles (kilometers) per hour.
Japan is particularly sensitive to the tsunami threat.
In July 1993 a tsunami triggered by a major earthquake off Japan's northern coast killed more than 200 people on the small island of Okushiri. A stronger quake near Chile in 1960 created a tsunami that killed about 140 people in Japan.
In Japan, where hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from shorelines, the biggest wave following the magnitude-8.8 quake off Chile hit the northern island of Hokkaido. It was four feet (1.2 meters) high. There were no immediate reports of damage, though some piers were briefly flooded.
Japanese weather agency officials kept their alert up well into Sunday evening, saying further waves could be on their way.
As the waves crossed the Pacific, they dealt populated areas — including the U.S. state of Hawaii — just glancing blows.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its warning for every country but Russia and Japan, though some countries in Asia and the Pacific were keeping their own watches in place as a precaution.
The tsunami raised fears the Pacific could fall victim to the type of devastating waves that killed 230,000 people in the Indian Ocean in 2004 the morning after Christmas. During that disaster, there was little-to-no warning and much confusion about the impending waves.
Officials said the opposite occurred after the Chile quake: They overstated their predictions of the size of the waves and the threat.
"We expected the waves to be bigger in Hawaii, maybe about 50 percent bigger than they actually were," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist for the warning center. "We'll be looking at that."
Japan, fearing the tsunami could gain force as it moved closer, put all of its eastern coastline on tsunami alert and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents in low-lying areas to seek higher ground as waves generated by the Chilean earthquake raced across the Pacific at hundreds of miles (kilometers) per hour.
Japan is particularly sensitive to the tsunami threat.
In July 1993 a tsunami triggered by a major earthquake off Japan's northern coast killed more than 200 people on the small island of Okushiri. A stronger quake near Chile in 1960 created a tsunami that killed about 140 people in Japan.
