Yup. And their lengthy historical records of tsunamis included reports of some twice as high as what hit Fukashima. Realistically they SHOULD have predicted the possibility of this. If they'd just sited their backup generators and power lines better they probably could maintained coolant power and prevented the meltdown. Had they retrofitted the reactor buildings to vent hydrogen gas, as American reactors of the same basic design already had, they wouldn't have had a hydrogen explosion blow out one of their reactor buildings to complicate things further.
“If they’d just sited their backup generators and power lines better they probably could maintained coolant power and prevented the meltdown. “
They were running on the diesel generators when the Tsunami hit. If the operator had just reached over and hit the E-stop on the generators when they saw the waterline recede they would not have hydro-locked the engines. They could have gotten something back online in time to avert meltdown.