In Japan, 16,000 candles were lit in memory of those killed in the earthquake.

The Mainichi Daily News - Japan will mark on Sunday the first anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeastern shores, left about 19,000 people dead or missing, and triggered the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

While much of the debris has been cleared, roads have been repaved and lives are beginning to be rebuilt, the scars left by the terrible devastation and the hardships that ensued continue to haunt the many affected by the disasters one year on.

The government declared late last year that the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a coastal power station in Fukushima Prefecture that suffered meltdowns and explosions in the aftermath of the quake-triggered tsunami, has been brought under control, but numerous residents are still unable to return to their homes in the vicinity of the plant.

Many memorial services will be held in the northeastern prefectures hit hard by the tsunami as well as in Tokyo and elsewhere on Sunday, with a moment of silence planned across the country at 2:46 p.m., the time the magnitude-9.0 quake jolted the country exactly a year earlier.

Emperor Akihito, who is recuperating from heart bypass surgery, will attend a government-sponsored memorial ceremony at the National Theater in central Tokyo along with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and representatives of those who lost their family members in the natural disasters.

Evacuation drills will also be held across the country to prepare for future quakes and tsunami, with some planned under the scenario in which a nuclear power plant suffers a loss of power just as Fukushima Daiichi did after tsunami waves flooded the plant a year ago.

At the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. President Toshio Nishizawa is expected to observe a moment of silence, while the plant operator will issue an apology to the public once again for causing the country's worst nuclear accident. TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata will attend the Cabinet Office-sponsored memorial in Tokyo.

Ahead of the anniversary, some events were held in Japan on Saturday to pray for the dead, including a Buddhist memorial service at a temple in Osaka featuring about 16,000 candles with names of disaster victims etched on them.

In Paris on Friday, about 2,000 people gathered for a mass at Notre Dame Cathedral where pianist Jun Kanno, who hails from disaster-hit Miyagi Prefecture and now lives in the French capital, expressed appreciation for the support provided to Japan by France and other countries, saying it gave survivors a way to find hope.

The quake and tsunami left more than 15,800 people dead -- most of them in the hard-hit Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures in the Tohoku region -- including about 500 whose bodies remain unidentified, while more than 3,100 people in six prefectures are still missing.

Police and the Japan Coast Guard have continued looking along the Pacific coast for those missing, most recently along the shores of Iwate Prefecture during a three-day intensive search through Sunday. A body was found in the sea off an Iwate town last month.

The tsunami destroyed or substantially damaged about 330,000 homes and other buildings in the hardest-hit three prefectures, but reconstruction has been slow. The approximately 160,000 evacuees from around the damaged Fukushima plant see no prospect of returning home anytime soon due to radioactive contamination in the areas.

The tsunami also created some 22.5 million tons of debris along the shores of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures. While clearing away the debris has made progress, just 6.3 percent has been disposed of so far.

In Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, a large bus that had been left on top of a two-story community center after it was swept there by tsunami waves from a parking lot about 500 meters away a year ago was finally removed Saturday as about 100 residents and bystanders looked on.

The government response to the disaster has been stymied by political wrangling in Tokyo, with the Reconstruction Agency, which is tasked with rebuilding the devastated areas, launched only in February.

The government is also having trouble strengthening its nuclear regulatory regime, facing increasing difficulty to launch a new nuclear safety agency as planned on April 1 due to doubts within opposition parties about the body's independence.

The government decided to set up the nuclear safety agency after the nuclear accident stirred arguments that the existing Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is tied too closely to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, which has promoted nuclear power.

The accident has heightened public anxieties over the safety of nuclear power, forcing other reactors in the country to remain offline once they were suspended for regular maintenance.

With the two remaining reactors in operation expected to go offline by early May, concerns are growing over whether the nation can weather surging power demand during peak times in the coming summer.