Panorama of Nagata Ward after huge days' long fire; the hardest hit area of Kobe.
DAY FIVE - Saturday, January 21, 1995:
I woke late today after a good night’s sleep. Since there still wasn’t much to do, I decided to walk around Kobe with my camera to record what had happened. I was particularly interested in seeing Nagata Ward which was reported to be the hardest hit area in the city.
I left my apartment alone and walked down to the railroad tracks to follow them towards downtown Kobe and Nagata Ward just beyond. I got off the tracks just before Sannomiya, passing an elderly couple slowly strolling hand in hand. The man wore a large bloody bandage around his head while his wife gently caressed his hand and softly talked to him. Except for this elderly couple, I passed no one else on the tracks today.
Sannomiya was even busier than the day before. There were greater numbers of heavy machinery rumbling with determined activity creating big clouds of dust. In a passing thought I wondered if there was asbestos from the old buildings mixed in with that dust. I covered my face with a handkerchief and walked away from all the commotion. Before leaving, I noticed that the building which had fallen across Flower Road was almost completely demolished and hauled away. By the end of the day it would all be gone and traffic would resume on Flower Road.
On the south side of the JR Line between Motomachi and Kobe Stations I found a Lawson’s convenience store open for business. Surprisingly, there were no long lines of people waiting to buy food or drinks. I bought some juice and a warm nikuman, which is hot bread dough packed with meat and onions inside. It was delicious, and I turned around to buy some more. But when I got there, someone had already bought the last few ones.
I continued walking through Chuo and Hyogo Wards until I reached Nagata Ward. There was a very large flattened burned out area just north of Route 2 and another even larger one to the southwest. I could not believe my eyes. The enormity and totality of the destruction was shocking. What was once one of the most densely populated urban areas in Kobe was now utterly wiped out and reduced to a smoldering hot desert of black and gray ash. I climbed to the top of a six-story building on the edge of the devastation to get a better view and some wide-angle pictures. The pulverized burnt areas covered numerous acres amounting to at least thirty square blocks each.
Several people were seen sadly wandering and picking through this hellish landscape searching for some evidence of their former lives, homes or the charred remains of family and friends. Occasionally I came across small solitary bouquets of flowers fluttering sadly in the wind or crudely erected memorials placed in the scorched ruins where loved ones were believed to have perished. All around me were numerous handwritten signs telling whoever was interested where certain survivors could be found and the fates of others who had not survived.
Burned out apartment buildings, shopping arcade and whole neighborhoods in Nagata Ward.
The dreadful scene made me very somber and humbled. I was embarrassed to take pictures and did so surreptitiously. A cold ashy wind blew softly over everything. I stood alone and motionless amid it all. My thoughts were buried in the crushing gloomy silence until jolted awake by the droning voice of a TV news reporter. His three-person crew took many takes of him saying the same lines repeatedly, and then coached him on his facial expressions and the sincerity in his voice. I watched with a mixture of scorn and embarrassment. It was Hollywood news in a death zone among the charred ashes of human remains with a director and make-up artist, while making absurd remarks such as “the Japanese tend to mark their history with disasters such as this”. His ignorance of Japan, the Japanese, my city, and his prima dona arrogance greatly irritated me and made me turn away in disgust.
On the way back to Route 2, I ran into another reporter who worked for the LA Times. He was a real journalist - the completely opposite of the TV pretty boy. He and his photographer needed directions back to downtown Kobe. I suggested they follow me. Along the way he asked what I had seen and done since the quake and I began talking non-stop while he listened and furiously took notes. It was such a relief to finally tell my story in unrestrained English.
Some public buses had by now resumed limited service along Route 2. I caught one to Kobe Station and then walked through Sannomiya in the dark to Shin-Kobe. The reconstruction work in Sannomiya was then being concentrated on two or three main streets. So, the smaller narrow side streets were pitch dark, deserted and unnervingly quiet. My heart raced as I scanned the darker shadows of the broken buildings as they towered over and pressed in on me. A noise just ahead suddenly startled me as another lone wanderer passed by me without speaking and disappeared into the blackness behind me. The eerie scene was in sharp contrast to the playful noise, bright lights and crowds of happy people that filled this same area only a few nights earlier.
I caught another bus in Shin-Kobe and got off a few blocks from my home. Surprisingly, neither the bus nor street had been crowded. The neighborhood just north of my apartment was quiet as usual. Except for all the garbage and rubble people had begun stacking on the street fronting my building, you never would have guessed that anything usual had happened.
More than thirty square blocks of Nagata Ward burned completely to the ground. Entrance to a destroyed home.
DAY SIX - Sunday, January 22, 1995:
This morning Mike and I packed and got ready to leave Kobe to stay with friends in Osaka for the next several weeks. We had not had a bath for six days, there were still food and water shortages, and no trains. And I had to return to work. Outside of Kobe, life and work went on as normal, and it was time for me to do the same. There was no way to commute back and forth between my home in Kobe to my office in Osaka every day. So, I had to find a temporary place to stay in Osaka closer to my work. At least until the gas was turned back on and public transportation could be repaired. We had no idea how long that would be.
We gave our food and water to a neighbor, who then gave us a ride to Shin-Kobe. From there we took several trains around the Rokko Mountains behind Kobe until finally arriving in Osaka three hours later (two hours longer than normal).
Arriving in Osaka was like entering a different world. The quake had not visibly affected Osaka and it was business as usual. All the shops and restaurants were open, and people hurried from place to place oblivious to what was still going on in Kobe only thirty kilometers away.
We had returned to civilization. A long hot bath and nutritious full course dinner did wonders for our spirits. But while Kobe was temporarily behind us, it was not forgotten. We stayed up late with friends watching the news and talking about our experiences. We were very fortunate to have good friends and a comfortable warm safe place to stay.
More destruction in the burned out ruins of Nagata-ku. One room perches unsteadily high above ground.
EPILOGUE:
The day after arriving in Osaka I returned to work, and except for staying with friends or in hotels, I quickly resumed my normal routine. It would be nearly two months before I could finally return to my apartment in Kobe after the gas was turned back on and some of the trains started running again. It was a warm relieving feeling to finally be back home despite the numerous transportation and other inconveniences that would persist over the next several months. I had missed Kobe and my friends and did not want to be any place else.
I was never the same after the quake and what I witnessed on those six days in its aftermath. Although I was fortunate not to experience a personal tragedy or loss of someone close, and while I did not suffer from nightmares and emotional scars like so many others (including several friends), the quake changed me. Before the quake, I was a young man, and Kobe and Japan were places for me to have fun and excitement, meet and socialize with friends, and chase women. After the quake, I matured and began looking at Japan and Kobe in particular as a place to settle down and call home. Friends became closer, my job became more important, I had less interest in clubbing and dating different women, and life took on more meaning and purpose. Among other things, I wanted to meet someone special. Within six months, I met the love of my life, whom I married two years later and started a family with. We have three daughters, two of whom were born in Japan and started school at Rokko Kindergarten. My daughters are the center of my life. Had I not experienced the Kobe Quake they would probably not exist today, as it would have taken longer for me to mature and settle down with someone special. Out of every tragedy there is hope and new beginnings.
Colorful New Year decorations still flutter amid the ruins of Nagata-ku.