SEAMY SIDE OF STORY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 126, 24 November 1923, Page 7

SEAMY SIDE OF STORY

Cdlamitiei like the Yokohama earthquake evoke magnificent heroism. They also remind us that the "ape and tiger" are still not far from the surface in us, ■writes "The Manchester Guardian's" Tokio correspondent, in a graphic account of the disaster. The Yokohama prison was wrecked and the prisoners escaped, and these and other ruffians soon began to revert to savagery. There are horrible stories of murder, robbery, and rape. The most extraordinary story of all, and the only one that explains official action altogether, is that some of the Japanese extremists in Tokio had in readiness a collection of bombs with which to greet the Imperial wedding in the autumn, and these went off in the fire._ Something roust have scared the officials badly, for they themselves industriously spread the report that all untoward things were done by "malcontent Koreans" and escaped Korean prisoners. It was the Koreans who had burnt Tokio down. • It was Koreans who were murdering and • koting. It was even said that orders had been given to kill Koreans at sight. The panic Bpread everywhere: Very soon the authorities Baw the mistake of encouraging such an idea. There was a jJanic fear even in the rural tract*. It was said that Koreans had poisoned the wells—a rumour that even came down to Kobe, where the reservoirs were declared to be poisoned. The police, after the rumour had had full run of the newspapers, forbade reference to it, even for contradiction, though in Tokio an official statement was given out deprecating the idea of Korean mischief, while still saying that there was some.

The natural consequence of these rumours is that Koreans, Chinese, and even strangely.-dressed Japanese have been murdered. Brutal murder in a good cause appeals to the lower instincts of the herd, and bands of "vigilantes" have been about in the Tokio and Yokohama neighbourhoods killing all the Koreans they could meet—a task performed with the more zest because thousands of Korean labourers have been flocking into Japan, doing more work and doing it for less pay than the Japanese, which does not make them popular. It is not at air unlikely that'they have been exterminated.' in Yokohama and Tokio. The feeling against them was intense to a degree that can hardly be understood, even by those in whose memory war hatreds and credulities are fresh. For the devastation was like that of four years' war compressed into one day. This side of the earthquake story will'probably be almost unrecorded in the histories of this calamity, but it will not be forgotten in Korea," where there had been promising signs of acceptance of the new regime and a forgetting of old grievances.