Two surgical operations were under way at Tohoku University Hospital in the city of Sendai on March 11 when Japan's strongest earthquake ever cut off the power. One was stopped and the patient stitched up. The other was completed with in-house power generation.

In the following days, cancer patients were sent home because there was no medication for their chemotherapy. More than 1,000 patients lived for four days on bread, canned corned beef and dried biscuits, said Mio Onodera, a 25-year-old nurse. There are no painkillers, and intravenous tubes are being reused.

"We are doing things I can't even think of in normal times," Onodera said in a phone interview from Sendai. "The hardest thing is to ask patients to put up with the pain."

At the hospital in this coastal city of about 1 million, employees who lost family members care for elderly patients with dedication, said Katsutoshi Furukawa, a 50-year-old neurologist. At Suzuki Memorial Hospital nearby, all division heads are sleeping on-site and no one has showered for six days, said nursing-division chief Katy Yagihashi, 53.