2000 JAPANESE DIE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22439, 20 September 1947, Page 5

2000 JAPANESE DIE

TOKYO FLOODS SLUM AREA VICTIMS ABOUT 200,000 HOMELESS (10 a.m.) TOKYO, Sept. 18. A 13ft. wall of water poured through a burst dyke into Tokyo's eastern industrial slum areas today in the wake of a typhoon and' floods that have already taken a toll of more than 1140 dead, 240 injured and 2180 missing. The broken embankment, which hundreds of weary Japanese labourers had struggled for" 20 hours to strengthen, had been holding back waters sweeping down from Saitama Prefecture, which is the heart of the devastated area. As the flood poured into the eastern slums water 2ft. deep covered northeast Toyko’s oldest industrial section, sending thousands of refugees fleeing to higher ground. The entire area was ordered to be evacuated because of the danger of disease. A later message states that Allied officials estimate that 2000 people have lost their lives in the floods and 200,000 are homeless.

Several hundred Allied personnel aboard a stranded train at Isliinoseki rave returned to safety.

Throughout today tens of thousands of refugees from the imminently floodthreatened north-west suburbs of Tokyo filled roads leading beyond the levees into the city. There were pitiful, seemingly endless streams of people on foot pushing barrows or bicycles carrying with them a few treasured possessions.

Hundreds of Japanese police and a special volunteer corps watched silently along the banks of the River Naka, which increased every hour as the tide rose in Tokyo Bay. One levee breach this afternoon flooded a suburb and made homeless at least 100,000 people, but at dusk the southern levee, on which the fate of 500,000 people was depending, was intact. but only just.