JAPANESE DISASTER.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 September 1923, Page 2

JAPANESE DISASTER.

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION. NEW ZEALANDER’S STORY. OSAKA, Sept. 10. Mrs and Miss Austin, of New Zealand, were seeing a friend off on the Empress of Australia, when the disaster occurred. They say: “Mo wore tossed about like ninepins. The pier ends disappeared under water. Hie earth came up in the harbour. We were stranded on an island, and we bad to wade ashore, where we saw terrible devastation. Tu 30 seconds everything as levelled as fiat as a pancake. We managed to struggle through the blocked streets, where people were pinned under the wreckage. Flames wore jumping up from evoryside. Me got to tlie Hibiya Park. Columns of smoke ascended into the sky like a volcano. “The harbour soon became a blazing mass, with oil pouring down front the tanks.” Finally they went aboard the Em press of Australia and were taken to Kobe. ANOTHER ACCOUNT. OSAKA, Sept. 10 Mrs M’right, of London, said that fissures opened in the Yokohama streets largo enough to swallow motor cars. For five miles no buildings were standing. She said: “There were dead and dying everywhere, and the screams of people trapped under the debris. T shall never forget the flames creeping up the streets, and the live wires trailing everywhere. Many people were electrocuted.” HARBOUR DEEPENS AT YOKOHAMA. OSAKA, Sept. 9. Soundings yesterday show that the sea bottom in Yokohama Harbour is now several feet lower. DEALING M’ITH DEAD. OSAKA, Sept. 9. A meeting of American, British and .Japanese officials was held aboard an American warship. Permission was .granted to bury the foreign dead, but only after the cremation of the bdoies. All the Japanese dead have been cremated on piles of wood in tlie streets of Tokio and Yokohama. The foreign dead are being similarly burned.

2300 GIRLS TRAPPED. TOKIO, Sept. 9. Tlie police, up to noon on Thursday, report having picked up in the streets of Tokio, 82,000 bodies, not including mutilated portions of many others. Twenty-five hundred bodies of girls were found where they had been trapped by the walls of a restricted quarter of Yoskiwnrs. Thirteen thousand corpses are piled beside an emergency crematorium, which is burning 1000 per hour. FINANCIAL RELIEF PLANS. LONDON, Sept. 9. Reuter’s special correspondent at Osaka says lie understands the Bank of Japan will offer financial help lo tlie bankers all over tlie country. The Bank of Japan at Tokio holds unissued notes amounting to two hundred million yon, and it lias recovered notes aggregating one hundred million, a total of three hundred millions, which the Bank is ready lo place at the disposal of the bankers to enable them to heln the sufferers. The enforcement of the Moratorium in Tokio is bound lo dislocate the financial operations in Osaka and elsewhere. Therefore the Osaka Branch of the Bank of Japan has decided to render all possible assistance to the private bankers, thus helping tom met* oial activities, ft is believed that this decision bus not only inspired confidence but will materially help the work of reconstruction. Tt is reported that the Japanese Government lias already appropriated nine million six hundred thousand yen for relief. The Government is prepared to pay relief funds as required, up to 330 millions, representing the available surplus. Tf necessary, a'Tttrther hundred and twenty millions, representing the Mint profit from recoinago will be used. Tn the course of an interview, the Minister of Finance is reported to have said:—“lt is possible that .laps* will find it neeossray to seek a loan abroad for reconstruction.” -M'AV JAPANESE TERROR. XEM' YORK, Sent. 9. .

The “New York Times’s” Tokio correspondent says; New and heavy earthquake shocks occurred in Tokio on Friday night. The island volcano Oshitna, which sank inio the sea off Kamakura last week, has reappeared ill the form of n new volcano, whence lava and brimstone are constantly erupting and belching, while severe shocks shake the mainland. These phenomena arc adding fresh terror to the hapless survivors.

JAPANESE THEORIES. •SHANGHAI, Sept. fl. Osaka reports the Observatory at Tokio has stated the earthquake originated in a landslip under the sea between Osliima Island and the mainland On the other hand the chief of the Osaka Observatory believes that it originated in the centre of tho Tokio district, in the same place as the lSofi earthquake. Oiher theories are that the whole series of quakes are duo to volcanic activity in the range of mountains including Fuji, flakone, Tdzu, and the Peninsula group. RUINS OF TOKIO. NEW Y'ORK, Sept. 10. The ruins in Tokio are a mass of hot tiles, masonry, and cinders, emitting clouds of gritty, choking dust. The business houses are recognisable simply hv the rows of safes standing intact, surrounded by heaps of charred debris. Nearly all the buildings of Tokio’s were wooden, hence the amazingly rapid spread of fires. Some concrete buildings stood tho shocks well, but most succumbed afterwards to the lire, in the course of which nobody could rescue more than a single change of clothing, whereof they are now desperately in need. .Meanwhile vague fears persist. Afany Japanese, Europeans, and Americans are notv sleeping in houses, hut the majority mistrust the roofs, lest they should collapse. ITeneo they .still prefer to spend the nights in the open.