Damage occurred in Kanagawa Chiba, Ibaraki, Saitama, Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures as well as in Tokyo and and Yokohama. According to survivors, the initial quaking lasted for about 14 secondslong enough to bring down nearly every building on Yokohamas watery, unstable ground. Regular contributor Joshua Hammer is the author of Yokohama Burning, about the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The measures included establishment of a new government entity for reconstruction. On September 6 he submitted his proposals on Tokyo's reconstruction to the cabinet, which approved it with some reservations. Joshua Hammer wrote in Smithsonian magazine: My own view is that by reducing the expatriate European community in Yokohama and putting an end to a period of optimism symbolized by that city, the Kanto earthquake accelerated Japans drift toward militarism and war. I watched flames shoot out from futons that people had slung over their backsAs hot as it was a girl tried to bury herself in the sand. 
The 1923 quake should also serve a reminder of the limitations of science, Hammer wrote. Telegraph and telephone lines went down across Japan, and the first full newspaper account didnt appear until Sept. 4 a full three days later, Hammer wrote.
Yonemuras bulletins helped to galvanize an international relief effort, led by the United States, that saved thousands from near-certain death or prolonged misery. People worked together to cool down the wooden boats, which were cracking because of the intense heat, by dumping water on them. Nobel nominee Junicho Tanizaki, who spent two years in Yokohama writing screenplays, marveled at a riot of loud Western colors and smellsthe odor of cigars, the aroma of chocolate, the fragrance of flowers, the scent of perfume.. But I had none to give her. Twenty expatriate regulars at the Yokohama United Club, the citys most popular watering hole, died when the concrete building pancaked. Within hours of the catastrophe, rumors spread that Korean immigrants were poisoning wells and using the breakdown of authority to plot the overthrow of the Japanese government. Here and there a remnant of a building, a few shattered walls, stood up like rocks above the expanse of flame, unrecognizable.It was as if the very earth were now burning. Since 1960, the date has been commemorated in Japan as Disaster Prevention Day. Joshua Hammer wrote in the New York Times, The relief effort, led by the United States, was fast and efficient, and ended up saving thousands from near certain death or prolonged misery. The epicenter was in Sagami Bay off Yokohama. Regarded as key to the project was the construction of large-scale trunk roads, which were to be at least 30 meters wide, and a large park. A series of towering waves swept away thousands of people. Red hot embers were scattered by the first quake. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3. The entity had the same status as a ministry. Like the 1923 quake, this one unleashed secondary disasters: a tsunami that washed away dozens of villages; mudslides; fires; and damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that emitted radiation into the atmosphere (and constituted the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986). Though they may dispute its effects, historians agree that the destruction of two great population centers gave voice to those in Japan who believed that the embrace of Western decadence had invited divine retribution. It presented exactly the aspect of a gigantic Christmas pudding over which the spirits were blazing, devouring nothing. Then, as in Yokohama, fires spread, fueled by flimsy wooden houses and fanned by high winds. The date was September 1, 1923, and the event was the Great Kanto Earthquake, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. Thomas Ryan, a 22-year-old U.S. naval ensign, freed a woman trapped inside the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, then carried the victim who had suffered two broken legs to safety, seconds ahead of a fire that engulfed the ruins. An overwhelming disaster has overtaken the people of the friendly nation of Japan, he declared on September 3. Joshua Hammer wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The tragedy prompted countless acts of heroism. One of the few buildings to survive the earthquake was Imperial Hotel designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Joshua Hammer Then came fires, roaring through the wooden houses of Yokohama and Tokyo, the capital, burning everythingand everyonein their path. The board was downgraded to bureau status after the Yamamoto Cabinet resigned en masse in January 1924. At the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike quake-prone Japan. Goto called for such a huge amount of money more than double the 1.4 billion yen annual state budget at the time because he wanted to rebuild Tokyo as a disaster-resistant modern city. According to one estimate only 0.9 dwellings in Tokyo were destroyed by tremors. About 80 percent of the dwellings in Yokohama and 60 percent of those in Tokyo were destroyed. Scientists at Japanese universities received tens of millions of yen to support projects ranging from constructing logarithmic formulas based on past seismic upheavals, to investigating whether catfish and eels displayed unusual movements such as tail-twitching or whisker-wiggling in advance of earthquakes. Hammer wrote in the New York Times, The 1923 quake kicked off a national effort to rebuild Tokyo into a world-class city. As the evening of the quake approached, Kinney observed, Yokohama, the city of almost half a million souls, had become a vast plain of fire, of red, devouring sheets of flame which played and flickered. The Tokyo earthquake was carefully documented and studied. Japanese expressed resentment toward Western rescuers; demagogues in the United States charged that the Japanese had been ungrateful for the outpouring of help they received. It moved Tokyo into the ranks of world metropolises., University of Melbourne historian J. Charles Schencking sees the rebuilding of Tokyo as a metaphor for something larger. Martial law was declared for a week. Then came fires, roaring through the wooden houses of Yokohama and Tokyo, the capital, burning everything and everyone in their path. A total of 142,907 people were killed or reported missing after the quake and subsequent fires, including 5,000 schoolchildren. The tremors and fires injured 502,000 and left 3.25 million homeless. ". The Tokyo earthquake was a actually a series of quakes that lasted for about 10 minutes.
Three minutes later there was a 7.3 quakes. Vast portions of the hills facing the ocean had slid into the sea.. Over everything had settled a thick white dust, he remembered years later, and through the yellow fog of dust, still in the air, a copper-coloured sun shone upon this silent havoc in sickly reality. Fanned by high winds, fires from overturned cookstoves and ruptured gas mains spread. My own view is that by reducing the expatriate European community in Yokohama and putting an end to a period of optimism symbolized by that city, the Kanto earthquake accelerated Japans drift toward militarism and war. The three-story Grand Hotel, an elegant Victorian villa on the seafront that had played host to Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham and William Howard Taft, collapsed, crushing hundreds of guests and employees. China and the United States lavished funds on similar research. The first shock hit at 11:58 a.m., emanating from a seismic fault six miles beneath the floor of Sagami Bay, 30 miles south of Tokyo. U.S. naval vessels set sail from China on the evening of September 2, and within a week, dozens of warships packed with relief supplies rice, canned roast beef, reed mats, gasoline filled Yokohama Harbor. This first quake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, increased in intensity for 12 second and caused violent shaking that lasted for five seconds. Soon, the entire city was ablaze. Then there was Taki Yonemura, chief engineer of the government wireless station in Iwaki, a small town 152 miles northeast of Tokyo. In an adjacent mound, a woman went into labor; the next morning she gave birth to a baby girl.". The "earthquake proof" building utilized the "floating concept" which meant that it rested on concrete and steel piers sunk into a 70-foot-thick bed of mud. Fifteen minutes later, they had spread to 136. Before she died she murmured, I'm so hot. Please give me water.' LARGE EARTHQUAKES IN JAPAN factsanddetails.com ; When the fires subsided, I walked around and saw corpses everywhere. EARTHQUAKES: GEOLOGY, FREQUENCY, TYPES, ENERGY AND RESEARCH factsanddetails.com ; The wave of good feeling between the two countries would soon dissipate, however, in mutual accusations. Joshua Hammer wrote in the New York Times, The earthquake hit in the early afternoon off the coast of HonshuNinety percent of the houses in a score of seaside towns collapsed in seconds. I'd thought I was hot but even the soles of their feet were charred." When the great fault in the Pacific shifted under pressure last week, nobody saw it coming. [Source: Joshua Hammer, New York Times], Japan rebuilt and got back on its feet relatively quickly after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. In the infamous "Kamoedo Incident, army officers butchered10 labor activists with swords.
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The Tokyo earthquake occurred as many Tokyo residents were firing up braziers for lunch. The braziers fell over and set houses and entire neighborhoods on fire. WHOLE CITY ABLAZE WITH NUMEROUS CASUALTIES.
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The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon. The cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, and surrounding towns and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant appalling loss of life and destitution and distress, requiring measures of urgent relief. The American Red Cross, of which Coolidge was the titular head, initiated a national relief drive, raising $12 million for victims. [Source: Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian magazine, May 2011], As the evening of the quake approached, Kinney observed, Yokohama, the city of almost half a million souls, had become a vast plain of fire, of red, devouring sheets of flame which played and flickered. People fled toward the Sumida River, drowning by the hundreds when bridges collapsed. The powerful quake and ensuing tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized a nation and unleashed historic consequences. Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Daily Yomiuri, Times of London, Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Comptons Encyclopedia and various books and other publications. The radio man flashed the news across the sea at the speed of sunlight, reported the New York Times, to tell of tremendous casualties, buildings leveled by fire, towns swept by tidal wavesdisorder by rioters, raging fire and wrecked bridges. [Source: Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian magazine, May 2011]. Image Sources: J.B. Macelwane Archives, St. Louis University, USGS. Then, as in Yokohama, fires spread, fueled by flimsy wooden houses and fanned by high winds. From the waterfront promenade, known as the Bund, to the Bluff, the hillside neighborhood favored by foreign residents, Yokohama was where East met West, and liberal ideasincluding democracy, collective bargaining and womens rightstransfixed those who engaged them. Then came fires, fanned by winds and fueled by flimsy wooden houses, reducing much of what remained to ashesThe quake leveled the great port city of Yokohama home to a population of 5,000 expatriates and burned down more than sixty percent of Tokyo. Such major metropolitan streets as Yasukuni-dori avenue and Harumi-dori avenue running through central Tokyo today were built as part of that post-quake reconstruction effort. [Source: Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, March 28, 2011]. Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. An earthquake! Yamashita Park built on the shoreline in Yokohama and Sumida Park, built along the Sumida River, in Taito and Sumida wards, Tokyo, were also fruits of post-quake reconstruction. According to one police report, fires had broken out in 83 locations by 12:15.
ALL TRAFFIC STOPPEDand dispatched it to an RCA receiving station in Hawaii.
KOBE EARTHQUAKE OF 1995 factsanddetails.com ; On that occasion, the Tokyo metropolitan Hibiya Public Hall was built in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, as a venue for citizens to discuss politics. On the home front, Hammer wrote. The earthquake also exposed the darker side of humanity. Capt. The tectonic makeup of Tokyo and surrounding areas is complicated, with two ocean plates subducting below a land plate on which the Japanese archipelago is located. See Separate Articles:EARTHQUAKES AND JAPAN factsanddetails.com ; Over everything had settled a thick white dust, he remembered years later, and through the yellow fog of dust, still in the air, a copper-coloured sun shone upon this silent havoc in sickly reality. Fanned by high winds, fires from overturned cookstoves and ruptured gas mains spread. One survivor said, "It was like a scene from hell. Terms of Use Tens of thousands of working-class Japanese found refuge in an empty patch of ground near the river. Yonemura tapped out a 19-word bulletinCONFLAGRATION SUBSEQUENT TO SEVERE EARTHQUAKE AT YOKOHAMA AT NOON TODAY. A 60- by 60-mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy.
[Source: Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian magazine, May 2011]. Because it hit the countrys Kanto Plain, the quake is known as the Great Kanto quake. Soon, the entire city was ablaze. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun. Down at the docks of Yokohama, Japans biggest port and its gateway to the West, hundreds of well-wishers were seeing off the Empress of Australia, a 615-foot luxury steamship bound for Vancouver. ; Lisbon in 1755; New Madrid Mo., in 1811; San Francisco in 1906; Tokyo in 1923; Peru in 1970; and Nicaragua in 1972. The Tokyo earthquake occurred just as many people were preparing their lunchtime meals on charcoal or coal stoves. It had complete authority over reconstruction. | READ MORE. The main sections of the board were the planning, construction and land-readjustment departments. Xenophobic newspapers published accusations that American relief teams were trying to humiliate the Japanese, putting a quick end to the era of good feeling.
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been authorized by the copyright owner. I saw a thirty-foot sampan [boat] that had been lifted neatly on top of the roof of a prostrated house. Joshua Hammer wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The initial jolt was followed a few minutes later by a 40-foot-high tsunami.
A wireless operator in the northern Japanese town of Iwaki functioned as the sole link to the outside world for days, sending fragmentary eyewitness accounts to a relay station in Hawaii which in turn, passed them on to San Francisco. Emperor Hirohito's wedding was postponed a year. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3. Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. Winds channeled through the streets created vortexes at intersections and fiery whirlwinds developed into tornados, which incinerated everything. People were also killed by mudslides, landslides and tsunamis. According to some estimates, the death toll was as high as 6,000. Advertising Notice The calamity initiated a massive effort in Japan to predict earthquakes and tsunamis. Right-wing extremists used the confusion as an opportunity to go after labor unionists and socialists. In Yokohama 90.2 percent of buildings were destroyed by fire.
Or, as philosopher and social critic Fukasaku Yasubumi declared at the time: God cracked down a great hammer on the Japanese nation. Thomas Ryan, a 22-year-old U.S. naval ensign, freed a woman trapped inside the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, then carried the victimwho had suffered two broken legsto safety, seconds ahead of a fire that engulfed the ruins. The quake destroyed the citys water mains, paralyzing the fire department. The smiles vanished, remembered Ellis M. Zacharias, then a young U.S. naval officer, who was standing on the pier when the earthquake hit, and for an appreciable instant everyone stood transfixed by the sound of unearthly thunder. Moments later, a tremendous jolt knocked Zacharias off his feet, and the pier collapsed, spilling cars and people into the water. Japanese mobs hunted down Koreans and beat them to death. Grim relics from these fires on display in an earthquake museum in Tokyo include a half-melted teapot in which someone's hidden nest egg of coins has been fused into a solid mass, and a box of sweets that were turned to charcoal by the intense heat. The radio man flashed the news across the sea at the speed of sunlight, reported the New York Times, to tell of tremendous casualties, buildings leveled by fire, towns swept by tidal wavesdisorder by rioters, raging fire and wrecked bridges.. The wave of good feeling between the two countries would soon dissipate, however, in mutual accusations. Cookie Settings, Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, New York, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts, The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird, The Unmistakable Black Roots of 'Sesame Street', The DNA of Hundreds of Insect Species Is in Your Tea, How to Deal With Work Stress and Recover From Burnout, Scientists Just Sent Two Batches of Stem Cells Into Space, Cavers Discover 200-Year Old Mine, Untouched Since the Moment It Was Abandoned. Even the Imperial Palace caught fire; the Emperor and Empress were in Nikko at the time. Otis Manchester Poole, a 43-year-old American manager of a trading firm, stepped out of his largely still-intact office near the Bund to face an indelible scene. Tokyo 1923 According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most destructive earthquake ever was the Kanto earthquake that struck the Tokyo and Yokohama areas at 11:58am on September 1, 1923. Meanwhile, a wall of water surged from the fault zone toward the coast of Honshu. The slaughter began after the Interior Ministry cabled local branches that ethnic Koreans were committing acts of arson and ordered them rounded up. The earthquake occurred hours before the hotel's official grand opening ceremony. Tens of thousands of working-class Japanese found refuge in an empty patch of ground near the river. Hammer is the author of Yokohama Burning, about the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.]. Also, reconstruction costs in principle would be the responsibility of the government, and long-term government bonds would be issued at home and abroad to secure funds. A series of towering waves swept away thousands of people. Later that day, Goto ruled out relocation of the nation's capital, announced that 3 billion yen would be spent on reconstruction, and said the latest Western urban planning methods would be used to rebuild Tokyo. During the Tokyo earthquake there is a famous story about people who took refuge on the Sumidagawa River aboard small boats tied up in the Fukagawa area of Tokyo. If you are the copyright owner and would like this content removed from factsanddetails.com, please contact me. For the city was gone., The tragedy prompted countless acts of heroism. Twenty expatriate regulars at the Yokohama United Club, the citys most popular watering hole, died when the concrete building pancaked. It moved Tokyo into the ranks of world metropolises. [Source: Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian magazine, May 2011], University of Melbourne historian J. Charles Schencking sees the rebuilding of Tokyo as a metaphor for something larger. Joshua Hammer wrote in Smithsonian magazine: Although the shock waves had weakened by the time they reached through the Kanto region to Tokyo, 17 miles north of Yokohama, many poorer neighborhoods built on unstable ground east of the Sumida River collapsed in seconds. The wall clock stopped, and the electric fan went flying.". The government would buy up disaster-hit plots of land by issuing public bonds, and lease or sell them after completing improvements., On September 27, Goto established Teito Fukko-in (Imperial Capital Reconstruction Board) chaired by the prime minister. One survivor later said, "We ran through cyclones of intense heat toward a school under construction. About 600 handpicked bureaucrats were sent to the board from the Interior, Railways and other ministries., On November 24 only two months after its establishment, the board drew up a seven-year reconstruction plan that included arterial roads and parks. Within hours of the catastrophe, rumors spread that Korean immigrants were poisoning wells and using the breakdown of authority to plot the overthrow of the Japanese government. The cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, and surrounding towns and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant appalling loss of life and destitution and distress, requiring measures of urgent relief. The American Red Cross, of which Coolidge was the titular head, initiated a national relief drive, raising $12 million for victims. In both instances, the toll was considerable, with estimated deaths in the 2011 quake approaching 30,000 and damage that could go as high as $310 billion. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun. Rumors began spreading that Koreans were looting and poisoning the water supply. Yet it also whipped up nationalist hysteria, with vigilante bands roving the lawless countryside, murdering thousands of Koreans. Passenger trains fell off railway bridges and plunged into the sea. The flames closed in from all directions, and then, at 4 p.m., a 300-foot-tall fire tornado blazed across the area. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. People fled toward the Sumida River, drowning by the hundreds when bridges collapsed.