At eleven that same night, the Yoshino passed through the Uraga Channel. Those on board had already seen from afar the fiery destruction raging along the Sagami Bay shoreline while the Yoshino was approaching the Miura Peninsula, but when the ship entered the channel, the salt breeze carried a peculiar, undefined stench. When they were passing Cap Kannon, the rain, which had been intermittent till then, suddenly began to fall in sheets, and little could be made out. Yet Onodera could see from the bridge the flames rising from underground storage tanks, glowing with a deep scarlet intensity like the fires of hell.
“Tokyo is burning,” muttered Kataoka, who was standing beside Onodera at the end of the bridge. “Kawasaki, too, and Chiba . . .”
“I guess the tidal waves hit about three hours ago,” said Onodera, pulling the hood of his raincoat tighter about his head. “The damage must be terrible.”
The Yoshino was proceeding at a reduced speed of seven to eight knots. A steam whistle echoed in the midst of the rain.
Flames shot suddenly upward at a point either in Kawasaki or Yokohama, probably from exploding tanks, and the noise was like the rumbling of the bowels of the earth.
“What an awful stench,” said Nakata, frowning and wrinkling up his nose, wet from the rain. “I imagine we’ll put in at Yokosuka. The city is probably in chaos, but they say that it would be dangerous to go too far north. Because of poisonous gas, heavy oil fires, and wreckage from the tidal waves.”
Peering down at the dark surface of the sea, Onodera realized that for some time they had been surrounded by all sorts of floating objects. Crates, tatami mats, oil drums, planks of wood, shattered fragments of every kind, and what looked like corpses.
“Off the port bow—something adrift!” shouted the watch at the bow.
A searchlight flashed on. There was a groaning roar set up by the front screw, and the Yoshino suddenly veered to one side. A derelict of some thousands of tons passed closely on the port side, nearly submerged, its capsized hull just above the surface.
From out of the rain and darkness came a faint cry.
“On the starboard bow—man in the water!” Again the watch’s voice sounded through the rain.
“Reverse engines!” the captain ordered, speaking into the intercom in a low voice. “Lower a starboard lifeboat. Pick the fellow up.”
While the boat was being lowered with a clattering noise, the glaring beam of the searchlight turned to the right and probed the water, but there was nothing to be seen on the surface of the sea lashed by the rain.
“Up ahead there’s a lot of derelict ships,” said the navigator, studying the radar screen. “Probably fishing boats and lighters smashed by the tidal waves.”
“The lifeboat is coming back,” called a sailor from the end of the bridge.
“How’d you do? Did you find him?” somebody shouted over the rail.
“We got him,” a sailor answered. “The only thing is he’s out of his head.”
“Professor Tadokoro,” said Onodera, turning around to where Tadokoro stood behind him, wearing not even a rain-coat. “The whole coastline around the bay seems to have been badly hit. It looks like the Tokyo waterfront has been wiped out.”
“That’s jumping to conclusions,” muttered Tadokoro as the rain beat against his unshaven face. “To say that now would be jumping to conclusions.”
“How are they at home, I wonder?” said Kataoka absently. “I live in Tamachi.”
✦ ✦ ✦
That night of fire and destruction and tidal waves, of inky black rain came to an end with clear skies at dawn, but the fearful aftermath of a city in ruins remained. Fires still burned along the shore. Black smoke, spreading out like a gigantic sea monster, hung low over the bay.
Onodera left Yokosuka in a helicopter, accompanying Tadokoro and Yukinaga, who had been summoned by the Prime Minister. He looked out the window, his eyes fixed upon the frightful scene below. In Yokohama, Kawasaki, and in Tokyo itself, thin smoke still rose here and there. Beneath a blue autumn sky in which floated high, fleecy tufts of cloud, an eerie quiet lay over that vast population center, the home of more than twenty percent of the Japanese. Aside from the fires still burning along the shoreline, the scene at first glance seemed little out of the ordinary. But when Onodera looked down more intently, the whole panorama of ruin slipped into view, the terrible aftermath of that swift rush of fiery disaster. The packed-together houses lay half in ruins, and burned-out sections, like frightful black blotches, spread out in every direction. In the center of the city, however, the large buildings had come through surprisingly well, despite being cracked and tilted.
“Chiyoda Ward seems to be in pretty good shape,” said Onodera. “Look! There’s a train running on the Yokohama Line.”
Beneath a clear autumn sky, Tokyo had begun to come alive once more. A fleet of bulldozers was already at work beginning to clear away the shattered ruins. Large trucks, probably loaded with relief materials, were streaming into Tokyo. And in the opposite direction moved military trucks and buses loaded with commuters who had finally been given the means of returning home. The Japanese, it seems, are on intimate terms with disaster, Onodera said to himself, feeling tears come to his eyes. Such was the surprised observation recorded by a German visitor to Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, who had seen the great fires that ravaged Edo and then heard the ring of hammers as the people who had lost their homes to the flames cheerfully started to rebuild without sparing a sigh of distress, even while the fires still smoldered.
This time, however, the scale of destruction was overwhelming. Even allowing for the “traditional” reaction, once the full extent of the disaster became known, and once it became necessary to confront the major problems that would stem from it, what, finally, would be the outcome? Still more—suppose on top of all this . . .
“The government has come out with an interim report,” said Yukinaga, his ear to the radio. “The dead—estimated at more than two million. The total amount of damage is expected to surpass one billion yen.”
“What’s that?” muttered Onodera, who had noticed from time to time something shiny falling from the windows of tall buildings.
“Even after the earthquake is over, the glass will come loose and fall out like that, given some tremor or other,” answered Tadokoro, looking straight ahead. “The same thing happened at the time of the Peru earthquake. People would have their heads slashed by glass like that and die long after the quake was over.”