A great earthquake which hit the Tohoku district, Northeast Japan on March 11, 2011 caused damage to natural history collections stored in the museums located along the Pacific coast in Fukushima Prefecture as well as in other devastated areas. In addition to this damage, some of the museums were forced to close down owing to a nuclear power plant accident following the earthquake and associated tsunami. The majority of the damaged collections were successfully rescued from abandonment by the efforts of the museums in the stricken area with the help of Fukushima Museum, Fukushima University and museums even in other prefectures. Hereafter an inter-organizational cooperation through the museums network besides financial support by scientific societies should be necessary for the affected museums to house and displaythe recovered collections as they did before the disaster. Inside the hazard area surrounding the crushed nuclear plant, main material salvage was not started until August, 2012. But most of the geological specimens have not been rescued yet because of low possibility of deterioration. We should take a strong that geological collections should not be left behind in the rescue project. The rescued specimens from the hazard area now stored with incomplete air conditioning in the ruin of a school in the northern part of the Pacific coast. Permanent establishment should be necessary to conserve and utilize the rescued specimens. A lesson fromthe disaster is that a database is crucial for the protection and recovery of the collections in the face of natural hazards. Construction of the collection database is not only a top priority in disaster preparedness but also allows the sharing of information among local museums for scientific research. Support by the inhabitants is indispensable to the success of the rescue. In order to get the support it is important that local museums make efforts to let the inhabitants comprehend the significance of the natural history specimens by using various functions of the museum.
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