Foreign News: Woe

Under the Pacific Ocean the sea bed moved. Came a great rumble. A violent displacement sent huge rushes of water to the surface and an enormous wall of green sea arose from the depths to career with devastating force upon the Japanese island of Kiushiu, south of the main island of Hondo, upon which is situate Tokyo, capital city.

At the same time an ugly storm gathered its forces of wind and rain, and, shrieking, screaming behind the white-topped sea mountains, lashed itself into tortuous fury and vent its wrath on this same island of Kiushiu.

Skirting the southern end of the island, typhoon and tidal wave broke on the western shore, carrying great boats high into the air and dashing them onto inland rice fields in the vicinity of Nagasaki. The towns of Nakamura and Kojima were wrecked. Jetties, heavy laden barges, motor boats were crushed by the terrific weight of water or blown away by the screeching wind.

Houses collapsed and the litter they made was hurled over the land for miles. Heavy rains beat down. Rivers and streams rose seething, overflowing their banks and rushing through the already flattened rice fields. Whipped into angry eddies by the driving storm, the flood carried whole houses with it.

Then the spent tidal wave receded. Miles of sea wall, some of it only recently constructed, crumbled as the gurgling sea sucked it to its doom.

For 600 miles the tempest careered before it had expended its mighty energy. At Yokohama, northeast, a cyclone scurried, twisting ‘and twirling, in its wake, howling too. Off went tin roofs, shutters, sun-blinds; down came chimneys, many small houses and buildings; and over went freight cars. So rapidly went the roaring blast (60 yards wide) that many people working indoors were not aware of the huge whirlwind until it was raging 100 yards or so away. And so great was the debris that the railways were blocked for hours.

Cost. When the Japanese came to count the cost of the awful visitation of the elements, they found 719 persons had been killed, 2,313 injured; 850 houses had been destroyed, 3,000 flooded, many of them floating away with their inhabitants astride the roofs; 37 vessels had been dashed from their moorings and ten miles of dikes had been washed away.