JAPAN'S GREATEST DISASTER

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 56, 4 September 1923, Page 7

JAPAN'S GREATEST DISASTER

APPALLING SCENES OF DESTRUCTION BEGINNINGS OF RELIEF ORGANISATION COMMUNICATIONS BADLY CRIPPLED Owing to the almost complete severance of the ordinary news channels, the reports of the Japanese disaster are meagre; but they show that the greatest disaster in the long record of Japanese earthquakes has happened. A huge area in the most densely populated part of the country has been devastated, and several great cities, with aggregate populations of many millions, have been more or less completely demolished. There are scanty references to the early stages of relief work, in which foreign warships are co-operating.

(UNITED PHES3 ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.) ' (AUSTRALIAN - NEW ZKALAHD OABLB ASSOCIATION.) NEW YORK, 2nd September. Various Press reports from Shanghai give the following- information of the Japanese disaster:—Tokio city is in ruins. To : day it was shaken by another earthquake, and. the Tokio arsenal exploded, injuring many relief workers and starting new fires, which are continuing the general destruction. All vacant grounds are filled with refugees, thousands are fleeing to the countryside. Fukagawa, Senji, Yokosuka, Asakusa, Kanda, Hongo, Shinagawa, and Ito are among the towns: and cities partially or totally destroyed. Communication with the 3tricken areas is now possible only by aeroplane, and a Japanese lieutenant who arrived thus at Osaka carried a message from the Japanese Minister of War requesting that appeals should be made for foreign aid immediately.

The entire Japanese fleet has been ordered to proceed to Yokohama for rescue work. British warships near Yokohama steamed to the port to take part in the relief work. The -water supply in Yokohama and Tokio is cut off. The Saska railway tunnel, which was the largest in Japan, collapsed. Hundreds of .towns skirting Mount Fujiyama have been wiped out by a landslide. It is the greatest disaster in the history of Japan.

LONDON, 2nd September. Ihe meagre news indicates the colossal nature of the disaster in Japan. Ihe range of the upheaval is apparently three hundred miles from Osaka in the south to Sendai in the north, embracing .the most thickly populated section of Japan. Many towns are blazing, and the water supplies are wrecked. Tho populace is panic-stricken everywhere in the streets-