About 85 concrete poles will be erected this year across Aceh, which was hardest hit by the December 26 tsunami that killed more than 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.

"Tsunami victims seem to be hoping to forget about the disaster as soon as possible, but I would say they shouldn't," said Hirokazu Iemura, a professor of earthquake engineering at Japan's Kyoto University who proposed the plan.

"They should learn to cope with the risks in their everyday lives, keeping in mind what happened there," he said.

The poles, some of which are as high as 10 meters (33 feet), will show the height of the waves and note the time it took for the tsunami to reach each spot.

The design is yet to be finalized, but the poles will likely also carry inspirational messages.

"I hope the poles will also accelerate local authorities' efforts to construct a place to evacuate, as Aceh is a flat place with no hills to which to evacuate from the waves," Iemura said.

Iemura, who headed a Japanese team that researched the tsunami, said the Japanese government will spend 9.78 million yen (85,800 dollars) to finance the memorial poles, which were approved by Indonesia.

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