ABSTRACT
BUT there was a rude check to these abundant energies. At noon on Saturday, September 1st, a violent earthquake shook Japan in the very heart of its activities. It was a brilliant summer’s day, with a high wind blowing, and everybody busy with their affairs, when, without warning, the earth shook, filling everybody’s heart with terror. There was a rush for the street, where, the earth continuing to vibrate with sickening persistence, people watched as tiles showered from the roofs, buildings crashed, and cries for help and screams of pain and fear rose on all hands. After minutes that held an eternity of anguish, the convulsion abated. People began to look into the damage and see what they could save. Most of the large modern buildings at least had stood, though some collapsed. Earthquakes, after all, were common enough. There had been a couple of bad ones the previous year, one on the day the Prince of Wales left killing several people; and there had been a severe shake at Nagasaki the previous November. One never gets used to earthquakes; each is more alarming than the last; but familiarity brings the idea of surveying the damage and putting things straight. The water-mains, of course, were broken, but some ice-cream and bottled drinks remained; and their vendors were soon doing business again on Tokyo’s main streets, for it was a hot day and there was a haze of dust. But one thing they had overlooked: in every house there had been a fire cooking the mid-day meal. Soon from a hundred wrecked buildings the flames began to creep and crackle. There was no
hope of help from the fire brigade. People hurriedly gathered whatever they could carry and began to trek for safety. The big buildings that had seemed like havens of refuge became roaring furnaces; the flimsy Japanese houses went up in instant flame. Wider every moment grew the conflagration, and the people knew not where to go, flames appearing on every hand. Many stacked their belongings on the bridges, thinking the fire would spare them, but flying embers set fire to them, and their owners often jumped into the canals and were drowned. In the poorest part of the city there lay a great vacant lot, the site of a former military clothing factory. Here, the refugees felt, they would surely be safe. No flames could assail them there; and in they trooped, carrying their scanty belongings. Over thirty thousand crowded in, cumbering the ground with their chattels. The place was full, and then the inevitable happened. Fire was all round them in a densely built area, and the flying sparks set the bundles alight. Soon the whole densely crowded space was a furnace. Few, if any, escaped from their fiery prison. The whole unhappy company were burnt to death with the fuel that they had supplied for their own burning.
