To   Japanese

1)   5:46am January 17, 1995

�@�@�@ I was woken up by noise. In the past I had sometimes been woken up by the noise made by motor bikes, so when I heard this noise, I thought to myself, still half asleep, "Oh, it's those riders again." But the next moment, I felt the whole world shaking with a rumbling sound. I started wondering what was going on. After a very short period of time, the first strong vertical shock of the quake hit us. It would sound cute if I compared that shock with those sumo wrestlers made of paper who jump around on the table, but rather, it was more like the shock made when you hit a weight at the bottom of a pole and it goes up and rings the gong; the kind of game you find in amusement parks. I quickly sat up in my bed. I could see my wife through the dim light of the bed lamp doing the same thing. When we felt the second vertical shock, I automatically pulled my wife down into the space between our beds.

The third shock came in a state of confusion. From what I remember, there was a total of three strong vertical shocks. From around this time, a very complicated quake began, shaking forward and back, right and left, and up and down. The quake after the strong vertical shocks can be compared to the intense rolling and pitching inside a submarine when it is sailing in rough seas due to the gale, or the amusement park ride which just keeps going around in one place, or the movement a small plane makes when it gets caught in turbulence. In any case, I cannot find one solid example that exactly expresses what we felt. It felt like the end of the world. Quite a long time seemed to have passed. The sound of the house breaking, small and big things falling, combined with the rumbling of the house made everything seem unearthly. My thinking power was totally gone. "Will the house collapse with the next shock?", "No, it's still surviving.", "Will the house make a creaking sound before it falls, so that I will know beforehand?", "How will it fall, if it will?" All these thoughts came and went sporadically. I brushed aside something that fell by my arms and hands. I could not see what it was then, but later found out that it was a framed picture that had been hanging on the wall, and long wooden bars for decoration of the ceiling. I do not remember when the electricity went off. The world was shaking so much that I could not even stand up. I think that I could not have done anything even if I had the emergency manual with me.

I could not see anything in the utter darkness; I could barely support my body and listen properly. Sound was the only reliable sense in the dark, so I could not even speak. I was obviously no longer sleepy; I was in a state of extreme agitation. My blood pressure must have been quite high. I found out later that the quake lasted twenty seconds, but it felt both longer and shorter than that. I must have been in a panic, experiencing the ever-unknown world. I had experienced earthquakes of an intensity of four in Tokyo, but this quake completely changed my image of what an earthquake was. The earthquakes I had known before were only like a cradle.

2)    Right after the quake stopped

  When the quake came to an end, the first thing that crossed my mind was that I had survived it. Then I thought that I should start taking appropriate actions. The first words that came out of my mouth were, "Where is the flashlight? Flashlight! Flashlight!" I was screaming it without moving. I thought it would be dangerous to carelessly move around in the house when it was so dark that I could not tell its condition. I remembered that I had bought a lamp with a transistor radio to prepare for a disaster, but I could not remember the essential point, where I had put it. We did have several flashlights in the house, but I could not remember where even a single one of them was. Then I heard my son screaming, "Dad, Mom, are you all right? You have to put on some shoes, you have to wear something warm." My wife remembered where the flashlights were and started moving. I put on a pair of pants and a sweater on top of my pajamas, and I also wore a pair of socks and then slippers. With the flashlights on, I could see that all the full-height closet doors were open and various things had fallen down and come out. I had to struggle my way through just to get out of the bedroom. I had to step over, sometimes climb over, and put aside all the things that had fallen and had piled up.

I was very worried about my mother-in-law who lived next door. I tried to go outside through the back door behind the kitchen. It was fairly easy to walk down the hallway and the steps, since there were not many things there originally. On the other hand, the dining room was a mess. Its floor was covered with all the things that had fallen, including the broken glasses and tableware. I was mostly surprised to see the kitchen, where there was a mountain of broken tableware between the sink and the shelf. When I looked more closely, almost all the kitchen items you can think of, from a microwave, a toaster, a mixer, to pots, canned food, and knives, were parts of the mountain on the floor. There was no way I could get to the door behind the kitchen, thus I made my way outside to the backyard through the living room, where things like books, dolls, etc. were scattered about.

Roof tiles were all over on the ground. When I looked up, I could recognize quite a few tiles which were only half stuck to the roof edge and half sticking out. Aftershocks came continuously, and I was afraid that those tiles could fall anytime. My son took off an already-half-removed "amado," a wooden sliding door that was put outside of the glass door to protect the house from rain and wind, and a inside locked aluminum window sash by force and stepped into his grandmother's room. With every step he made, there was a sound of cracking glass. He found his grandmother who was crouching in her blanket. She was surrounded by a fallen closet, TV, dresser, doll case, etc., and after my son brought her outside, where she was was the only clear space in the whole room. There were broken glasses and broken mirror, shaped like a sword, all over on her blanket. There were also small mountains of fallen clay wall everywhere. It was truly a miracle that she received no major injuries.

3)  Information; communication

    The next thing I thought of doing was to check the safety of all our relatives and friends. But because of the power stoppage, our telephone with answering machine, which operated on power, did not function anymore. My son found an old telephone and connected it to the line. There was no telephone memory function on the old telephone, and I could not find a phone book, so I had to rely on my memory to dial. Thus I told them that we were safe and I checked on their condition. Right after the earthquake, the phone line was still functioning the same as normal. I could roughly estimate by the phone calls where the quake had hit the worst.

Meanwhile, to grasp the accurate present situation, I tried to turn on the radio which was designed into the flashlight, but the battery was out. I ran toward the car, thinking the car stereo must work. The body of the car was bumpy because of the fallen roof tiles, and the windows were broken. Fortunately the door opened, so I turned on the radio, but no sound came out. Then I realized that I had not turned on the key for the ignition. I went back into the house to look for my car keys. Then I went to the car again and finally could listen to the radio. The radio continuously reported on the damage in Kobe. NHK clamored repeatedly that the dead numbered less than 100. I walked around the street. The more I observed my neighborhood, the more I realized how far the radio report was from reality. The first floor of a wooden house slid to the side and its second floor fell on the ground, tilted. There were several destroyed houses like this. Also, the first floor of a ferroconcrete apartment broke down, and a car which was parked there kept on honking with its headlights shining on the street. The honk sounded like the car's death agony. I do not remember how many totally destroyed houses I saw within the ten minutes I walked around my house. There were few houses which were still completely up. It was indeed a big disaster for sure. I went back home and looked for some batteries. I found them in the mountain in front of the locker. Now I could use the radio in the flashlight, which enabled me to walk around and listen to the radio at the same time. However, the radio only reported the information in the east area such as Nishinomiya, Ashiya and Higashinada. After a while, it started reporting about Nada, Chuo, and the east part of Kobe. Then it reported fires in Hyogo and Nagata. I had never before understood how centralized information in Japan was around the biggest city. The information was coming in only from the direction of Tokyo and Osaka. Ironically, through this disaster, I learned how the information media functioned. The information around my house, which is a small area of Suma around the JR line, towards the sea from the Sanyo line, was not reported until a few days later. The reporters who came from the east stopped at the fire sites in Nagata, therefore there was almost no report on my area which was right west of Nagata. The only report on Suma area was about the hillside of Suma, where there was not much damage. This earthquake hit the flat ground badly, and the hillside area, which was only several hundreds meters away, did not get much damage at all.

4)  Gas leak

    As day dawned, my neighbors started to clamor that they smelled gas. I smelled it, too, when I got out to the yard. I was more afraid of gas catching fire than gas poisoning. I looked for where the gas was leaking from. The smell was coming out of the houses that fell down on the street. I thought that I could stop the gas leak if I could find a gas meter, so I started looking for a gas pipe and a meter. Then I found the gas pipe, which was connected to the gas meter, completely torn off. I went home, looked for a phone book, and called the gas company, but all they told me was just to be careful. I quickly wrote down "Gas leak. Caution, flammable" on the back of the calendar, and taped it where it could be easily seen near the pipe.

5) Investigation of damage

     I looked around my house to check the damage. I had a hard time checking the rooms where the doors could not be opened, but overall I was relieved to find no major damage, at least on the surface. I had decided that my house would be able to survive aftershocks, too, thus my mother-in-law evacuated to my house. I saw a lot of people walking towards the evacuation places with nothing but what they happened to be wearing. It seemed even safer just to stay home rather than to walk on the road where all the tilted houses were about to completely fall down.

I heard that some neighbors were buried alive under destroyed houses, so I did go outside to see what I could do. However, I did not find one single professional rescue person. Some people from a nearby construction company had begun rescuing people by using shovels and hand saw, but I had no idea what I could do. I was so scared that I could not even go closer. By word of mouth from the neighbors, I learned that the Hanshin Highway and the railroads were destroyed, and also most of the famous buildings in Sannomiya such as the International Hall (Kokusai Kaikan), the Newspaper Hall (Shimbun Kaikan), and Sogo department building were destroyed. By noon, someone was saying that the worst damage was from Suma to Nishinomiya, and the dead numbered over five thousand.

6)  Ensuring the necessities of life

     I noticed that I had not eaten anything all day, but there was no food nor drinks. I started to clean the kitchen, hoping to find some food. However, the kitchen was just too damaged to be cleaned, with all the broken tableware, kitchen appliances, pots and pans, sugar, salt, soy sauce, flour, the left-over tempura pot fell and all of the oil had spilled all over the mountain. I gave up on it for the time being. There were so many other things that had to be done before sunset, such as securing the sleeping places and also clearing spaces where we would not have to wear shoes for access.

The electricity was back on for about twenty minutes during the day, but that was only briefly and it went off again. My son had gone to the hospital where he worked in the early morning. He came home once in the afternoon with some rice balls and a bottle of water. I wondered what we would do tonight without power, water, gas, food and drinks. I went around nearby supermarkets and stores on bike, but they were all closed. They were distributing rice balls and water on the street in front of a fire sub-station, so I got some for dinner. I thought we would have to wrap ourselves with many layers of blankets to sleep that cold night.

7)  The fear of fire after the earthquake

     As time went by in the afternoon, the sky in the east got covered with smoke. By evening, the flow of the smoke got even stronger, and as it got darker, the smoke changed to a reddish color. The ash that fell around my house got bigger and bigger. My anxiety only increased as the radio reported that the fire brigades were at a loss because of the lack of water for fire fighting. The fire seemed to be approaching our neighborhood, brought by the wind from the east. I heard that some neighbors who were staying home eventually started evacuating. I wondered if my family should also follow them. Since the radio reports and the rumors could not be fully trusted, I thought that I needed to go and see the real condition with my own eyes. Thus I headed for the scene of fire on bike. I hit a traffic control quite soon, but I used a side road to get closer. I checked how the fire fighting was going from a hundred meters away from the fire. Several hoses were pulled out and set up, but they were all flat with no water pressure. People who were around there could not do anything but just look at the fire absentmindedly. I made a judgment that it would take quite a long time for the fire to reach my house, since it would have to cross the JR Takatori switchyard and narrow Tenjo River.

During the day, it was the sun which was red, but at night, a red, clouded moon was seen every now and then among the smoke. It was almost the full moon, a very chilly night. The siren of fire engines and ambulances rang without a break outside. All my family members gathered in one room and listened to the radio in the dim light of a candle. I went outside occasionally to check how the sky in the east was looking. The flow of the wind started changing little by little. Also I heard that the ambulances from other prefectures arrived and joined the fire fighting. This news somewhat made me relieved. I took a rest, drinking beer that survived the quake. I slept in my cloth, with my jacket by the pillow, so that I could be ready to jump out anytime.

Next morning, I was woken up by somebody knocking on our door around five o'clock. It was our neighbor who came to tell us that the police, which was located between our area and the fire scene, started evacuating. He wanted to talk what we should do. It was still dark outside, but I once again wanted to check the condition with my own eyes, thus I dashed to the fire scene. I pedaled desperately on the road, where the destroyed houses hindered my way.

I hit the main road where the innumerable red lamps stretched toward the fire scene. When I got closer, I recognized the ambulances with "Hiroshima Pref." "Nara Pref." etc. written on the side.

As I got closer to the fire scene, there was still smoke all over but I could see the actual red fire only partly. Many hoses were pulled out on the street like scattered noodles. All of the hoses looked completely round, telling us that they were sending water with enough pressure. I recognized one young fire fighter taking a break with a piece of bread and coffee by a fire engine. judged that the fire was under control now. I headed back home to set my family and neighbors at ease.

8)   What I think now in regard to the Hanshin Earthquake (Written on 1995)

    Many seismologists have already announced various opinions regarding the Hanshin Earthquake. It is said that the motive power of the quake originated in the northern part of Awaji, and the underground layer, twenty kilometers deep, shifted two meters between Awaji and Suma-Nishinomiya area. It only surprised me that the gap, which was as small as only one over 10,000 to the depth (2/20,000), caused such a big quake.

The main transportation, which connected the east and the west of Kobe, was cut off. The traffic control right after the quake in the Kobe area was not followed in disorder. On top of this, next door neighbor, Osaka prefecture had kept their control after the quake and stopped cars entering Osaka, while allowing car to out of Osaka. The traffic jam occurred everywhere, and the emergency vehicles like fire engines and ambulances could not get to the scenes promptly enough. This caused the increased number of the victims. With this as a lesson, we need to go over the emergency measures from now on.

The main roads between Osaka and Kobe, eight-lane highways and twelve-lane state roads, always suffered from the heavy traffic even before the earthquake. The quake destroyed the highways. Only eight out of twelve lanes can be used on the state roads after the quake. We cannot even estimate when all the roads will be completely fixed. This will be a big hindrance to Kobe's restoration as a city. After the earthquake, we still suffer from the secondary disaster.

It is indispensable to rapidly fix the transportation system, especially the highways, for Kobe's restoration. In order to achieve this, I think that Japan's shipbuilding technology should be fully utilized because it is elated at building big-sized constructions, with motive powers such as vibration and shock under assumption. Japan's shipbuilding technology, one of the best in the world, is also capable of managing a large quantity of construction work in a short time. You may think that I am drawing water to my own mill, but I truly believe in it for Kobe's rapid restoration.

I learned how important it is to make a judgment of whether one should evacuate or not at the time of disaster. I also learned that, in order to maintain a family's safety and health, one needs to make a decision of what should be done, based on the trusty information which one collected him or herself.

The electricity was back on temporarily, which made our family happy then, but now that I think about back then, I shiver. There was a fire very close-by, and gas was still leaking. Anything could have happened.

Suspension of water supply was a pain. We had a hard time securing the drinking water for the first three days or so. But after that, people kept on bringing water to us, which was greatly helpful. There was no water for flashing toilets and laundry, but I suddenly and fortunately remembered that there was an old well, which had not been used for ages, in our yard. For the first few days, water was muddy, but it became clear in awhile. I invited my neighbors to use the well, too. By the end of January, the water supply was back on. We also fixed the oil boiler so that we could take a bath. We offered our neighbors to use our bath, too.

Twenty people died only in Inaba-cho, which is a small area. The construction machines are working every day and dump trucks are parked everywhere. Destroyed houses were cleared one by one, and where they were, the vacant land spreads now. While I cannot even guess how long it will take for all the destroyed houses to be completely removed, it is impossible to imagine when the beautiful town will be back, with new houses and fixed roads.

We found several broken pillars in our attic, so we strengthened them by attaching new pillars. The gap of the wall papers is widening here and there day by day. Some woods inside the wall may have been cracked or broken, but I am too afraid to check, so I am leaving it as it is for now. We fixed the water pipes where there was leaking from holes. We replaced the oil boiler, which got a hole by being turned over, with the new one. We fixed all the car windows, but not the bumpy hood yet.

At any rate, we are happy enough that our family safely survived the earthquake and live healthily now.

9) Afterward

     I can still think of so many other things to write about what happened during the twenty four hours after the earthquake, but I omit them here. I wrote this document as something memorable. I would like to ask you to understand our present condition from this writing, whereas I would really have to visit each one of you and explain in person. Thank you for reading.. ( It was written within the year of the quake.)