FIVE-MILE TUNNEL UNDER HILLS OPENS COASTAL RESORT IN JAPAN

Shannon News, 18 January 1929, Page 3

FIVE-MILE TUNNEL UNDER HILLS OPENS COASTAL RESORT IN JAPAN

ATAMI, Japan

It is nearly three years now since the railroad built into Atami, this little coastal resort nestling in a corner of Sagami Bay arid protected from the cold winds of winter by the mountains which circle it about, but the little steamers come and go just as before. The diro predictions that they would vanish with the-coming of the railroad have all proved false.

For centuries Atami has been an isolated spot. . The many wars which raged throughout Japan during the long feudal period passed-, it by., leaving" it happy and contented. The'Toknido, the Eastern Sea Read of Japan which links Tokyo with Kyoto .and along which so many acts in the Nation's drama have taken place, cuts inland,, before Atatni. is reached to cross the high range of the Bajkonc Mountain .barrier. ,

With the day of the steamboat ,in Japan Atami was at least partly knit iqto the world of which it h/rd so .loxyj not been- a pait. Later a tiny, narrow gauge railway was run along the face of the cliffs' from Odawara, 3.8 .miles distant. It clung perilously,- them, ami at places was supported by the frailest of bamboo scaffoldings. -Sturdy coolies pushed the train uphill, to climb iu and ride down the next slope. And then the engineers ,of Japan decreed that a great tunnel, more than five miles in length, -should be cut •through the flakone Mountains aa.d so s&ive an hour’s time in the trip between the Bread East and the Broad West. Atami was the site chosen at. which to boro into the mountain range.The tiny railway* was discarded and modern engineering car.vcd a good railway out of the cliffs that lie between Odawara. and Atami, at limes tunneling through them, at time* cutting a niche along their faces, bridging* chasms and achieving the difficult. Trains were run into Atami a:- a terminus until the .’'greater tunnel should be completed and they might thus continue on to Kobe and Osaka.

Atarui rejoiced, for it now believed prosperity had coinc. And it'has. Many handsome villas are being ero.aved, thri mountains overlooking the town and the sea are being terraced for more homes. But the little steamers still ply between Atami and the ports Along the Idzu peninsula, even as far as Shimoda. The peninsula is not vet served by a railway and only one motor road runs down its high backnone., Another road is being built along the coast,, and in time the railway will also bo extended.