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Of course the plants were placed on the shoreline because that gave them access to the sea water they used for the necessary cooling of the plants during normal operation. An inland location would only have been suitable if they found one with suitable access to the 20-100 million gallons of cooling water needed per day (depending on whether they chose open- or closed-cycle cooling) to operate each plant.
My understanding of the newscasts is that the diesels failed after an hour
due to the tsunami hitting the site. Seems likely to me that the tsunami
would have also knocked out on site generation. To me it looks like the
present situation could have been avoided if the site was moved inland. I
heard that the water went 6 miles inland, so, if the site was more than 6
miles inland (or some multiple of 6 miles) the diesel generators might have
done the job.