Nankaido earthquake, 1946
On the heels of World War II, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Nankaido, Japan, on Dec. 20, 1946. The earthquake was felt from Northern Honshu — Japan's largest island and home to about 100 million people — to the southernmost island of Kyushu. The quake killed 1,362 people.
This quake ruptured in the Nankai Trough, a subduction zone where one tectonic plate slides below another. Earthquakes have been rupturing here every 100 to 200 years since the 7th century.
