Twisted collapsed railroad tracks between Hankyu Shukugawa and Hankyu Nishinomiya Kitaguchi Stations.
DAY TWO - Wednesday, January 18, 1995:
We awoke this morning from an unsatisfying sleep to the incessant wailing of distant sirens from many emergency vehicles coming from all over the city. It was mixed with the pounding sounds of military, medivac and media helicopters. The prefectural and national governments were mobilizing and finally moving into the city, and the outside world was waking up to the extent of the disaster. The sirens and pounding rotors of helicopters would continue almost non-stop for the next several days. We quickly got used to the sound, but it was always there in the background as a constant reminder of Kobe’s continued suffering.
We learned this morning from the TV that trains were running to Osaka from Nishinomiya Kitaguichi Station, nearly 15 kilometers away. Mike and I decided to walk there with Takako to help her return to Tokyo and to find food and drinking water along the way. We ate one more rice ball each and climbed up to the roof again to survey the surrounding area. Many fires were still burning out of control south in Nada Ward, and even more west beyond downtown Kobe in Nagata Ward. The sky was filled with ominous black, gray and white smoke on two sides of us. Except for the smoke, which often blocked the light and warmth of the mid-morning sun, it would have been an otherwise beautiful cloudless winter day.
We left the apartment and began our journey east to Nishinomiya at 11:30 a.m. When we reached the Hankyu railroad tracks, we turned to walk on the tracks and follow them straight into Nishimomiya. At first it seemed strange and mischievous to walk on the tracks as it is against the law to do so in Japan and strictly enforced by the local police and railroad. But they obviously had bigger things to worry about, and no trains would be running this far into Kobe for a long time. The gravel became painful on the bottoms of our feet, but the tracks were the most direct and least obstructed route to Nishinomiya. After a while it became rather monotonous, so Mike played blues on a harmonica he had brought with him.
Between Rokko and the next station, Mikage, we passed an area where a friend of mine lived. I had met Yuko and her Japanese American fiancé on the train to work one morning several months ago and had seen her nearly every morning since then. By sheer coincidence, we found that we had a mutual friend who lived in Nishinomiya. As we approached Mikage, I saw that Yuko's neighborhood was devastated by the quake and I worried if she were OK. Since I did not know precisely where she lived, I decided to contact our mutual friend in Nishinomiya to get her address so that Mike and I could later check in on her.
Several hours and stations later we saw a small liquor store was open. It was ironic that the first open store we encountered after the quake would be a liquor store. But it was doing a lot of business and since we were tired and thirsty, we decided to stop and check it out. The store was very small and reeked of stale beer and alcohol from all the bottles that had fallen off the shelves and broken during the quake. We tried to find some juice, soda, chips or other snacks, but they had all sold out. All the beer was also sold out and the only thing they had left was hard liquor. We did not want to drink hard liquor, particularly on empty stomachs, so we left and continued our journey.
One stop away from Nishinomiya we saw the tracks had warped and twisted, and that the rails were increasingly crooked and dipped down in many places. It got worse the further we walked. By now there was a steady stream of people walking on the tracks with us. Just before Shukugawa Station we passed a three-story apartment building that had been shaken off its foundation and was now hanging dangerously at a sharp angle over the tracks. People stopped to take pictures and continued walking under the building without any care.
There was a stalled train when we arrived at Shukugawa Station and the concrete station platform was severely cracked and broken in many places. As we walked through the ruins of Shukugawa Station we could feel the platform sway unsteadily under our feet. We had to get off the tracks here and use the street below since the tracks up ahead had fallen and were destroyed.
The street here was crowded with people, many of whom carried luggage and bags of personal belongings they had salvage before leaving the city. Above us to one side the railroad tracks had fallen and lay broken and twisted in many places. At one point, the railroad bed had collapsed from under the rails, leaving the rails and ties suspended in mid-air for thirty meters.
Just before reaching Nishinomiya Station we came upon a small grocery store selling its remaining stock of goods. There was not much left. We could only get a few packs of gum and cookies. Although we had eaten only two rice balls each during the past 40 hours, we decided to ration the cookies and gum since we weren’t sure we could find more food that day.
Finally, after three and a half hours, we arrived at Hankyu Nishinomiya Station. It was packed with a sea of people tightly pressed in against each other. I told Mike to wait behind for me while I helped Takako purchase a ticket and get through to the platform area. We had to rush to her train and had only enough time for a quick farewell hug.
Apartment building leans dangerously over tracks near Shukugawa as residents leave Kobe.
I rejoined Mike and we walked around the station area. There was a lot of damage and destroyed homes and shops on the north side. We found a working payphone and I called my friend Masa to ask about our mutual friend Yuko. Masa had also not heard from Yuko since the quake. I was now very concerned and met Masa at JR Koshienguchi Station, about thirty minutes walk away. Masa and his home were fine. But his parent’s home had been destroyed and his sister-in-law trapped under rubble for several hours. After Masa drew me a rough map of how to get to Yuko’s place, Mike and I bid Masa farewell and promised to let him know what we found out.
As we headed back towards Rokko, we passed a five-story building in Koshienguchi that had been a dormitory for college students. It had toppled over into the street on its side and was now covered with firemen and rescue personnel. We learned they had found and retrieved several bodies and that ten more people were still trapped inside. It was unknown how many still survived, and since there had been no cries for help since the previous night people were not very hopeful.
Mike and I did not want to stand around and watch, so we headed to a main road and began hitchhiking back towards Yuko’s place. We were picked up by a family and given a short ride to east Ashiya, one and a half train stops away. The family had lost their home and were planning to sleep in the car that night. Since I had a spare room, I offered to let them stay at my place if they didn’t mind driving to Rokko. But they had already made plans to meet friends at a nearby park. They did not have much food with them, so we gave them the cookies we had bought earlier.
Mike and I were dropped off on Route 2, one of the main secondary roads connecting Kobe and Osaka. It was packed with emergency and other official traffic heading west into Kobe. And they were not likely to give a ride to civilians. Surprisingly, there was little traffic going the other way from Kobe towards Osaka.
After walking several kilometers we were picked up by a young man who had traveled from the opposite end of Kobe to get some water and personal items from a relative’s home in Ashiya. Although his car was packed with stuff, he still stopped and made room for us. He was kind enough to give us a ride directly to Yuko’s neighborhood.
It was dark by the time we arrived there. We searched the area for Yoko's apartment, but without success. Although there was a full moon that night, the moonlight was often blocked and yellowed by the many fires that continued to burn throughout the city. The neighborhood was very quiet and dark. In the often-changing light of the moon we saw that virtually every building in the area had been destroyed. Several blocks were completely gone, and it was by far the hardest hit area we had seen since the quake struck. It was totally deserted, and while there must have been some people still trapped somewhere under all the rubble, there were no cries for help and no rescuers or anyone else going through the rubble. Dark shapes of partially collapsed ruined hollowed out buildings loomed all around us. The combination of yellow moonlight, darkness, total silence, and utter destruction in the midst of a deserted urban neighborhood was unbelievable and unsettling. I could not shake the thought of my friend perhaps being trapped alone and hurt deep in the cold still darkness of one of the many ruined buildings.
There wasn’t enough light to check the map Masa had drawn for us, so we tried to find Yuko’s place by remembering what the map had looked like. We walked around until we met a man walking his dog and asked about people in the neighborhood. He had a small flashlight and offered to help us find Yuko’s place. We soon found what was though to be her address, but the street was buried under rubble and indistinguishable from the other heaps of rubble all around it.
After an hour searching and calling around to anyone who might still be trapped under the rubble without hearing any replies, we still could not pinpoint Yuko’s building. Masa had told us that she lived on the second floor of a three-story building and had drawn us a picture of what the building looked like from the street. But none of the structures here were recognizable and, in fact, there were no three-story buildings left standing at all. I feared her building was part of the rubble covering the street. But since I did not know exactly where she lived or even if we were on the right street, there was nothing more we could do except return home and hope for the best.
On the way home I was quite solemn and gloomy. During the time we walked along the tracks our journey to Nishinomiya had seemed like an adventure. But now, after seeing Yuko’s destroyed neighborhood, I realized that a friend of mine might be dead or seriously hurt, and there was nothing I could do about it. The sense of adventure was gone and replaced with dread and uncertainty. Mike tried to cheer me up by being optimistic. But I kept remembering the smiling young lady I had looked forward to seeing each morning on the train as she excitedly talked about having her own place and dreams of someday moving to Hawaii with her fiancé.
That night I again slept very little. By now, I had already gotten used to the frequent ongoing aftershocks. But as I lay warm and safe in my warm comfortable bed, I felt guilty and worried about my friend. I awoke frequently and stared into the darkness waiting for the morning light as I listened to the continued droning of distant sirens.
Destroyed homes in Mikage.