When evening came, the sinister rumblings that followed the quake gradually quieted, but the destruction went on. For, since there was no means to check them, the fires that had broken out in well over a hundred places throughout the city gradually spread, and in the gathering darkness the red glow that lit the sky grew ever more vivid. Along the shoreline ravaged by tidal waves, flames burst like red lotus petals from ruptured storage tanks and warehouses, and smoke billowed skyward to form massive black columns.
No trains were running on either the National Railways or the private lines. Fires had broken out in some sections of the sub way. Others were flooded. The streets were everywhere blocked by either fire, rubble, or burning vehicles. The elevated expressways were in still worse condition. Near Nishi Kanda and Shibaura the supporting girders had been twisted out of position, and, all along the expressway, sections of the cement pavement had fallen away, and burning cars, melting the guard rails and turning the asphalt to flaming jelly, had come tumbling down like balls of fire. The seething mass of asphalt on the higher sections of the roadway was flowing down into the tunnels, which were belching fire and thick black smoke. Culverts throughout the city were filled with gas vapors, and periodic explosions sent manhole covers flying. Here and there, rushing water from broken mains clashed with the raging flames to give rise to clouds of steam.
✦ ✦ ✦
When Yamazaki once more became aware of his surroundings, he was in a grove of of trees on the grounds of the Meiji Shrine, dragging one leg as he walked. His left ankle seemed to be severely sprained, and with every step fierce pain shot through it. Up to this moment, however, he had taken no notice even of this. He looked around him, but Yasugawa was nowhere to be seen. Instead there were masses of men and women, sobbing, breathing harshly as they hurried along distractedly. To Yamazaki’s rear, beyond the grove, the sky was red.
How had he survived? Yamazaki wondered dully as he dragged his leg along. He was sure that the building had collapsed. Hanging on to the landing of the fire escape, he had watched as though in a dream as, undermined by crevices, it had tipped more and more. Together with the fire escape, together with the building, he had been falling as though in slow motion toward the ground below, against which all alike would be pounded and shattered. And then he had been hurled free. Something had struck him painfully in the back, and his body had bounced about like a ball. Sparks had exploded in his face, and a bitter, pungent smell had struck his nostrils. Somebody had let out a piercing scream. He remembered nothing after that.
The strength was drained from his body, and every part of it ached. He felt something wet and slippery rolling down his face. The arm of his jacket was torn as though slashed with a razor, and his shirt and even his undershirt were ripped in the same way. Blood flowed down his bare arm. The left leg of his pants hung in shreds from the knee down. His shin was covered with abrasions. Oppressed by his weight of pain, he groaned instinctively. Then his heart began to beat at an alarming rate, growing gradually more intense until his ears were ringing.
Just as he was coming out of the grove, Yamazaki felt his legs giving way beneath him, and he fell to his knees. Sweat rolled down his body. His breathing became painful, and he felt a dizziness taking hold of him. Then the whining roar in his ears gradually subsided, and the cries of distraught men and women came to him from a distance like ripples striking his ear. He took two or three deep breaths, and his head cleared at last.
Here beneath the trees of the Outer Garden, thousands of people had already come together. Sometimes the glare of some blaze shone through the trees to light with a dim glow the chaos of this terrible night.
“All of downtown is gone!” somebody shouted. “Akasaka and Shibuya, too. Aoyama is going to be next.”
“Tokyo Bay is a sea of flames, I tell you.” This last was said in low and hurried tones by somebody passing by. “From Tsukiji to Shinagawa . . . the whole area . . . and the Ginza, too—all wiped out.”
Feeling the pain in his leg, Yamazaki got to his feet. Suddenly he began to worry about his family. His weary, grumbling wife . . . his pimply-faced oldest son, who had let his hair grow womanlike in keeping with the latest fad . . . and then his older daughter, who resembled neither of her parents and whose strikingly beautiful face gave him all the more cause for concern now that she was growing into adolescence, and his younger daughter, somewhat retarded because of a mild case of polio . . .
“Excuse me a minute, please,” said Yamazaki to a passing stranger. “Have they got the trains going again?”
“The trains?” the stranger burst out, his voice harsh. “Why, the tracks are twisted like pretzels. And then there’ve been landslides and everything. Why, at Shibuya . . . when a train packed with people was leaving the station, and just as it was starting to move, it jumped the elevated tracks. There’re bodies everywhere. I’ve just seen it with my own eyes.”
“It’s horrible on the expressways,” somebody said in a high-pitched, tearful voice. “In Kasumigaseki it’s horrible. In the tunnel there ...”
“What are the police doing anyway?” asked somebody else. “Where are they? Any other time you’d see them all over the place.”
Suddenly there was a loud, joyful shout at the edge of the crowd. Yamazaki heard the sound of truck engines, and from beneath the trees the glaring beams of headlights lit the faces of those around him. Three trucks pulled up and stopped, and helmeted soldiers in khaki uniforms began to jump down.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a relief squad of the Ground-Defense Force,” a loudspeaker announced. “Are there any injured among you in need of immediate attention? We’ll take charge of them at once. As for those of you who can walk, please proceed to the gymnasiums and indoor pool at Yoyogi. Emergency relief stations have been set up. Please remain calm and maintain your normal behavior. The earthquake is over with. As for the fire, due measures are being taken. It’s too early to say how soon rail service can be restored, but engineer battalions of the Ground Defense Force are laboring right now to open the lines leading from Tokyo to each outlying area.”
“Can you take us home?” somebody yelled. “My family’s in Mitaka. They’re worrying.”
“Any time now transportation units should be arriving over by Yoyogi Sports Center. So please go to the Sports Center. Only, ladies and gentlemen, because there will be such a crush of people, please stay calm and don’t get excited. At the Sports Center there should be news available about the damage sustained in each district and about the resumption of travel. As much food and drink as possible has been prepared there. So, calmly, orderly, proceed to the Sports Center, please. The troops will guide you there.”
A searchlight went on, sending a stir through the crowd. They had yearned so much for light that now that they had it they were uncertain as to whether they could trust it. By the light spilling from the searchlight, Yamazaki studied the face of the officer talking to the crowd. His intrepid face was sunburned, and his cheeks were touched with an odd trace of childish innocence. From overhead came the whirring racket of a helicopter. A wind was beginning to rise. That helicopter will have a hard time of it, Yamazaki thought, as he glanced over his shoulder at the scarlet glow of the fiery destruction behind him.
Climbing black smoke covered the sky, lit by the baleful glare of the flames. Thunderous booms, probably exploding petroleum tanks, shook the sky again and again.
Suddenly Yamazaki found himself reliving an old memory. During the war . . . the night of the great raid on Tokyo . . . He had been in his late teens then. The night that his neighborhood in Shinagawa had been burned out, the night that his mother and his younger brother had died. The heavy, listless feeling he had felt then came back to him all at once, the mood that had gripped him that night when he had stood straight up, not going down into the shelter, watching the heavy rain of incendiaries and the fiery chaos around him—a sullen mood, a sense of help less frustration . . . Since that long-ago night, Tokyo had expanded to a city of fabulous proportions. The destruction must be incredible, Yamazaki thought. If the oil floating on Tokyo Bay took fire, there would be a dreadful holocaust. And even after the destruction had been checked, civil paralysis, given the incredibly complex system of metropolitan government, might persist for a long period. Disorder could spread through out the whole country.
What a situation, thought Yamazaki, dragging his leg pain fully as he walked in the midst of the now-moving crowd. If the Cabinet should fall in the near future . . .
Black specks and white specks fluttered in the air, lit by the beam of the searchlight. Yamazaki looked up. In the lead-colored sky a seemingly infinite number of black spots danced in the wind, blown along across the sky like a million flickering bat wings.
“Ashes are falling”, muttered an old man next to Yamazaki. “We’ll get soaked. It always happens. There’ll be rain. After a big fire there’s always rain. Isn’t that right? That’s the way it was during the big raids.”
Yamazaki felt a drop strike his cheek from the shower that was indeed beginning. In a corner of his overburdened mind, he gloomily considered the future of Plan D. If the Cabinet should fall, what in the world would they be able to do then?