THE JAPANESE DISASTER

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 56, 4 September 1923, Page 6

THE JAPANESE DISASTER

Details of the Japanese cataclysm are still fragmentary. Widespread and prolonged; earthquakes, followed by tidal wave and fire, swept away many thousands of lives, and did an incalculable amount/of damage to property, much of it the work of artists and craftsmen whose skill and secrets have died with them. That is about all that is definitely known at present. Tokio, Yokohama, Yokosuka (the Jap-, anese Portsmouth), Nagoya, and Osaka.. (both great manufacturing cities) are reported to :be destroyed, or very seriously affected. Fuller and more detailed information 'of the disaster is necessary before any estimate can be formed of the destruction of life and property, but it iB clear that.it has been enormous. Some anxiety outside Japan is necessarily felt for the foreigners, who are numerous in Japan at any time, but' rather more so just now, for the Hakone region, which is reported .as suffering severely, is as popular a resort for tourists and health-seekers from China and other parts of the-Far East, and in some of its natural^features it resembles our own- Rotorua. At Yokohama the greater part of the European population lives on the Bluff, which: would correspond to The Terrace in Wellington in relation to the Port at its foot, and it is presumed they would have escaped the full force of the tidal wave. Tokio is a vast plain of roofs stretching for miles and miles, and above them rise the pagodas and high-peaked temples, towers, and palaces. The streets are narrow and the houses tightly packed together. The firemen of Tokio are highly trained, verycourageous, and'efficient, but this disaster has evidently been beyond the skill or resource of Japanese or any other firemen to cope with. The country all around Tokio is well railroaded, but the lines would, of course, be rendered useless for the carriage of passengers or foodstuffs for the relief of. survivors. All that can be don© here for the present is to sympathise. with the Japanese in the terrible calamity. They are a highly capable people, and cool in an emergency, and so they may be trusted to take the visitation philosophically. If a call comes for help, it will not find the outside world unresponsive.