Three Seconds That Killed A City

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30568, 10 October 1964, Page 5

Three Seconds That Killed A City

(By G R. LANE) 'J'HE heat rose relentlessly from the dusty Quaysides and shimmered on the flat black water, in the. great waterfront hotels, fans whirled and ice clinked in tall thin glasses.

Yokohama, Japans main port, was sweltering under the hottest September the first in living memory. But apart from the heat, that Saturday morning in 1923 was reassuringly normal.

Businessmen were having a lunch-time drink. Office workers were packing up ready for noontime release. In thousands of homes lunch was being prepared. Then 74 seconds before noon, death came to Yokohama. In the space of time it would take to clap your hands three times, the city was a collapsing mass of flame and falling stone. The sound of an earthquake is dull and distant, but the impact instant, immediate and terrifying, in seconds, Yokohama was a shattered city of death and fire and the world was witnessing the most horrible natural disaster in its history. Three times the earth heaved and shook: three second-long reverberations, then the planet resumed its tireless, timeless, routine — like a man who pauses to settle his coat more comfortably on his shoulders in the middle of a long walk. But those three seconds were enough to throw the elements out of control. It took three days before man could even begin to restore some kind of order.

And by then about 104,000 persons had died—4o,ooo more than were to perish in the Hiroshima nuclear attack 22 years later. The Japanese Government called the disaster “the most horrible since authentic history began,” but to those who were in Yokohama on that September day, it seemed something of an understatement. There were thousands of heroes in Yokohama during those terrible hours, but heroism seemed to meet little reward among the fire and destruction. Help Needed Help was needed. But how could it be obtained when every means of communication with the outside world had been battered into silence? ! Eventually it came through ' a crackling radio message • dictated by a wringing wet policeman from a wireless cabin of a luxury liner. Police Superintendent Chai Morioka had swum out through the oil blazing on the water of Yokohama Harbour to send the vital call for help and supplies. Assistance came quickly: a British destroyer flotilla rushed from Shanghai, warships of the American Asiatic Squadron immediately laid in £500,000 worth of supplies and set sail for Japan. In America, the Red Cross started a 5,000,000 dollar relief fund. • A horrified world followed every fresh bulletin on the disaster. Yet the citizens of Yokohama and Tokyo were not shocked, but numbed with hopelessness and despair. Chai Morioka’s private nightmare began like everyone else’s at 74 seconds before noon as he scrambled to his feet in his wrecked office and saw fire flickering over the city.

The air was full of dust and tumult. Morioka reached automatically for the phone: it was dead. Already outside his office about a thousand refugees were trying to find shelter from a hail of flying debris.

Buildings buckled and cracked, flames from cooking stoves overturned in thousands of homes, were building up to a holocaust. Morioka sent an assistant to find a telephone and tell Tokyo what had happened. The man never got through, nor was he seen again. A cyclone built up from the west and plunged like a winged sword into the city. It sucked off the tops of burning buildings and hurled them on to the fleeing columns of refugees. There were hundreds of terrible incidents. When one building collapsed, 30,000 persons were destroyed in the space the size of a football stadium. As the wind rose, It fanned the blazes into swaying columns of red flame. Milling refugees carrying bundles of belongings themselves became carriers of fire. Police intercepted as many as possible and forced them at sabre-point to • drop their inflammable goods. No Escape As the police headquarters tottered and cracked, Superintendent Morioka led a huge near-panicking crowd in search of the safety of open space. But there seemed no escape.

Eventually they reached the docks. Oil seeping from cracked storage tanks was already igniting on the water. Ships previously berthed along the quays had moved out into the harbour for safety. The crowd stood huddled on the wharves. They watched as Superintendent Morioka I threw himself into the water and began to swim out to I

where the cruise liner Korea Maru was anchored.

Exhausted, he reached the liner’s side, and was dragged aboard and impatiently rejected medical aid for extensive oil burns.

With a megaphone, he directed all ships in the harbour to move into the quays and encourage refugees to jump into the water and be picked up. Then, installed in the wireless cabin of the Korea Maru, he sent to Tokyo and to the world the first news of the disaster. The Korea Maru relayed this message: “Today, at noon, a great earthquake occurred and was immediately followed by a conflagration which has changed the whole city into a sea of fire. We have neither food nor water. For God’s sake, send help at once.” Morioka then radioed all ships in the harbour requesting that all food they could spare be released. Improvised feeding centres were set up on the dockside. Troops Arrive ‘ The next day, 35,000 troops came from Tokyo to try to restore order. Enormous crowds queued all day for a cup of water each. People ran behind water carts trying to catch with their hands any drop which leaked from the pipes. Still the city crumbled and burned. Parents searched aimlessly among the wreckage for their children, and children for their parents. As night came the ruins took on an eerie glow. On nearby Iseyama Hill a hardened Western newspaperman turned away, his face wet with tears. “I can’t write this,” he said. “It just can’t be done. . . .”

Forty years later, Yoko- ! hama stands again. Reinforced (concrete has taken the place lof flimsy lath and plaster, an I institute of seismology has

been established to watch for future tremors. Undoubtedly there will be further upheavals in Japan—the world’s “earthquake factory.” But never again will they catch the people so completely unawares.