SAVED IN BATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 267, 8 November 1923, Page 5

SAVED IN BATH.

'QUAKE INCIDENT. MBS. HAWKES' TRYING ORDEAL MIRACULOUS ESCAPE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 2. It transpires that the victim of the incident in which a woman having a bath at the Grand Hotel at Yokohama was thrown from the second floor to the street, when the first earthquake shock occurred, was Mrs. L. M. Hawkes, of Melbourne. Mrs. Hawkes, whose husband was killed in the disaster, and who is mother of Mr. J. B. Hawkes, who passed 'through Auckland hist week with the Australian Davis Cup team, arrived in Sydney on Sunday by the Niagara on her way back to Melbourne. It seems that of the many Europeans saved under sensational conditions none were subjected to a more trying ordeal than Mrs. Hawkes. She is etill suffering from- the shock sustained through the loss of her husband and the injuries received when Yokohama was razed. Her husband and a friend, Mr. Charles Markell, had gone to see about booking their homeward passages to Australia, and she was having a bath on the second floor of the hotel. Suddenly the place shook, and the next moment the -walls Eeemed to , cave in and the bath to go downwards like a lift. It landed in the roadway among the debris and ruins, from where the pitiful cries of the dying were emanating. Nearby, under a heavy beam, Mrs. Hawkes saw a European, but was powerless to help him. Gallantly he struggled, and eventually by a super-' human effort he freed himself and came , to her aid. It was then blazing freely all along the foreshore. The flames turned in their direction. The sea. was their only chance of even temporary safety. Kealising this, the European picked up Mrs. Hawkes and assisted her through tbe scorching heat over the cracked and broken road to the waterfront. There they both sought shelter neckdeep in the water. What clothes the man had had on originally were so badly scorched as to be practically useless, and with the fire then right down to the water's edge covering for the lady was unprocurable. For hours she kept to the water, while Japanese in their terror fought for places in everything in the harbour that would float. The European then swam out some distance to get a boat with the object of making for one of the ships moored in the harbour. This was the last Mrs. Hawkes saw of him, and she is afraid her unknown benefactor went to his doom with the thousands of others who lost their lives there on that day of terror. Some time later her plight was witnessed by several njen who had managed to procure a skiff. They pulled over and took her aboard, and clothed her in the only covering they had —a piece of tarpaulin. Then they pulled out to the nearest steamer, a Japanese freighter. But the captain wouldn't take them aboard, despite the entreaties of the boat's crew to at least offer succour to the woman in their midst, What happened subsequently was more like a nightmare than reality to Mrs. Hawkes. She knows that she was eventually picked up and afforded relief on one of the refugee ships, with decks crowded with injured, maimed and burnt Japanese. Of the frantic search for her husband in the days of awe that followed little was said. Even when, she left, Mr. Hawkes, sen., was among the missing, but he had not been identified among the dead. All doubts regarding the fate of her husband were dispelled on ! the. voyage to Australia, when the grief - 1 stricken woman received an official notification from Japan stating that the body of Mr. Hawkes had been found, and was being, dispatched to Australia ( immediately.