Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force members take a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m., exactly a month after a massive earthquake struck the area in Otsuchi, Iwate prefecture. (Yasuhiro Takami - AP) Today is the one-month anniversary of the March 11 earthquake in Japan. The earthquake and tsunami that followed have killed more than 27,000 people and set off a nuclear crisis the country is still grappling with.

The past month has been anything but pleasant for the people of Japan. The Post’s Chico Harlan reported today that some 150,000 Japanese are still displaced. A 19-mile evacuation zone has been set up around the nucleus of the nuclear radiation zone, and nuclear contamination has been showing up in Japanese food. Aftershocks continue to roil the country. Washington Post reporters have been on the ground since the first quake hit. Harlan and others are still there. His reporting over the past month has captured much of the devastation. Here’s a snippet from his story about a Japanese town going through something called liquefaction:

Urayasu, the home of Tokyo Disneyland, resembles a town reflected in a funhouse hall of mirrors: severely warped streets and fences, tilted houses and police booths, sunken utility poles and pushed-up manhole covers resting on three-foot-high piles of dirt. At Disneyland, the parking lot rippled and buckled, a ride the 68,000 patrons at the park that day hadn’t counted on.

To the list of destructive forces that have wracked Japan — earthquake, tsunami, radiation from a crippled nuclear power plant — can be added liquefaction, a phenomenon that occurs when the earth’s violent shaking forces sand particles, once packed tightly, to shift apart and allow water to seep in.

Moments after the quake, Urayasu literally began sinking into the ocean.

Paving stones are disturbed from the recent earthquake in Urayasu, Japan. The quake caused water to bubble up from the ground across the 3,600-acre base of mud and sand in Urayasu city, said Kazuhisa Nakatani, a local government spokesman. (Toshiyuki Aizawa - Bloomberg) Washington Post staff in Japan and Washington have been working around the clock over the past month to cover the story of the quake and its aftermath. Here’s some of our best coverage:

PHOTO GALLERY: Massive rescue, cleanup efforts underway in Japan

PHOTO GALLERY: Devastation in Ishinomaki, Japan

PHOTO GALLERY: New respect for no-nukes messenge

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: How the nuclear emergency unfolded

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: A wave of destruction

STORY: In Ishinomaki, Japan, stories of survival and loss

BLOG POST: Recreating the quake, in tweets

STORY: An emperor gives hope

STORY: A Japanese dynasty comes down to Earth

STORY: After catastrophe, a vibrant city turns sober

Are you doing anything to commemorate the one-month anniversary of the earthquke? Do you have any stories about the disaster to share? Let us know in the comments.
A woman with a baby walks past the rubble in Kesennuma, Miyagi prefecture, after the March 11 tsunami and earthquake devastated northeastern Japan. (Fred Dufour - AFP/Getty Images)