Japan, A History by Noel Fairchild Busch

Author:Noel Fairchild Busch [Noel Fairchild Busch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Asia/Japan
ISBN: 9781640190979
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2017-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Yamamoto is the name of numerous Japanese families. At the Battle of Tsushima, dozens of Yamamotos were involved, and at least three had important roles. One was a wireless expert who enabled the Japanese to be the first to use it advantageously in warfare. Another was Isoroku Yamamoto, later commander in chief of the Japanese Navy in World War II, who lost two fingers of his left hand in a gunnery mishap on the battleship Nisshin. The third and possibly most prestigious was Admiral Gombei Yamamoto who, as navy minister in 1904, had given his onetime shipmate, Tōogōo, the job of commander in chief and supported him loyally throughout the war.

After the Portsmouth Peace Conference had ended hostilities, Tōgō made a triumphal world tour, paying a courtesy call on Theodore Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill. He gave his host a lesson on how to clean and care for the samurai sword that TR, by then ex-president, had acquired as a souvenir from Emperor Meiji. When Meiji died in 1912, Tōgō withdrew into retirement until his death in 1934. Gombei Yamamoto, however, progressed in public life, becoming prime minister in 1913 and again in the late summer of 1923. On the afternoon of September 1, while he was in Tokyo working to form his new cabinet, the room suddenly began to sway and bounce. The Kantō Daishinsai, or Great Kantō Earthquake Disaster, killed 144,000 people within the next forty-eight hours.

Earthquakes in Japan are not unusual. Minor quakes occur monthly and major ones at intervals of a few decades. This one, however, was exceptional. It lasted for only fifteen seconds but was so severe that chunks of plaster falling from the ceiling severely bruised Yamamoto’s left arm. Brushing debris off his sleeve as he came down the stairs, he told the reporters who were waiting to hear the names on his list: “Well, you will certainly have plenty to write about today.”

The Kantō earthquake of 1923 measured 8.3 on the Richter Scale. The epicenter of the quake was about thirty miles south of Yokohama and fifty miles south of Tokyo, but the time of its occurrence was deadly - when lunch was being cooked over red-hot coals in millions of wooden houses with straw-mat floors, paper windows, and pine-board siding.

Of the 144,000 deaths attributed to the earthquake, fewer than 10,000 were caused by buildings that crashed down, by tidal waves, or by other immediate consequences. Nor were most of the casualties caused by people being burned alive in the conflagrations that started immediately and reached their maximum intensity a few hours later. Most fatalities resulted from suffocation as a side effect of huge firestorms whose flames whirled hundreds of feet into the air. These storms drew all oxygen away from the ground, preventing tens of thousands of people from breathing for lethal periods of time. One passed across an open area near the Sumida River where some 40,000 terrified city dwellers had sought refuge from surrounding fires. In the three or four minutes it remained overhead, the storm asphyxiated almost the entire 40,000.

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