Tidal waves measuring more than ten meters high hit Japan’s eastern coastline when the island nation was jolted by a massive earthquake in March last year.

Quoting a study of a Japanese civil engineering society, Japan’s state-run NHK TV reported that the tsunamis swelled to more than ten meters high when it hit a 530-kilometer stretch of coastline from Aomori Prefecture in the north to Ibaraki Prefecture in the south.

The academic society measured the height of the tsunamis based on traces left by the natural disaster in five-thousand-200 regions in northern and western Japan near the Pacific Ocean.

In particular, a 200-kilometer stretch of coastline running from Iwate Prefecture to Miyagi Prefecture was inundated by waves more than 20 meters high. Iwate was the region hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunamis.