The great eruption of Mount Fuji, occurring on March 12 at 1:21 P.M. just as the Prime Minister was addressing the nation, began with an explosion on its southeast side, about 1,000 yards from the peak, followed by the bursting open of some twenty craters of varying size, one after another, on the slope below, spewing forth gas, ashes, and fiery projectiles. And at almost the same time several peaks to the southeast erupted. Fiery ashes and rocks bombarded the area, blocking the Tokyo-Nagoya Expressway and cutting both the regular Tokkaido Line and the Super Express.
The first eruption went on for about two hours. And then, after a brief lull, at about 3:45 P.M. there was a tremendous explosion near the peak which carried off the entire crest of the mountain. At the same time a vast crater opened on the northern slope and a flood of lava came pouring out, for the first time in 900 years, rolling down the slope and turning the forests below into a sea of fire. The lava swallowed up a village and a cluster of resort hotels and poured into the Sai and Motosu lakes at the foot of Fuji. This cataclysm, though in fact no more than a prelude, raged for some six hours, and then there was a slackening off which lasted for about four hours. During the entire period a heavy, muddy rain fell, mixed with volcanic ash. Finally, at 1:25 A.M. on March 14 an earthquake struck the area to the southwest, and three minutes later a massive eruption blew the top of Mount Fuji into the air and split the entire mountain on a northwest-southeast line, transforming it at one stroke. Energy stored up for more than 20,000 years, trapped in a volcano that was expected never to erupt again, tore Fuji asunder, and the rain of rocks and ashes, the flood of lava, the shock waves killed more than 20,000 people. Fuji shrank in height by some 2,000 feet, and the entire district sank more than three feet. The lovely, cone-shaped mountain that had been celebrated from the era of the Manyoshu poems as the symbol of Japan was turned into a scarred crater, a hellish caldron several miles in diameter—one, moreover, that was split in such a way that it appeared to be two mountains. The volcanic ash that fell from the sky reached a depth of six feet in the vicinity of Odawara, three feet in Kofu, and in Tokyo itself four to eight inches in some places. A light coat of it covered even the runways of Narita Airport, nearly thirty miles away.
On March 22 a message came from the Plan D field group in central Japan to the Policy Committee informing them that Eastern and Western Japan, divided by the fossa magna, were beginning to slip away from each other at a considerable rate. At present the rate was several millimeters a day, and it was gradually increasing. By mid-April, the report said, the rate would most likely be several inches a day.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Japan Archipelago would sink within a year. The government’s announcement shocked the world, but the reaction in Japan itself was strangely calm, though it might be more accurate to say that the news had plunged the Japanese into an enervated, ominous silence. There were those who ran outside screaming, but such cases were extremely rare. As they listened to the Prime Minister’s address, a hard, blank expression came over people’s faces. When the broadcast had ended, the only show of emotion was, for the most part, a faint sigh. It may have been that the news was so fantastic that, for the moment, everyone was at a loss how to respond to it. At factories and offices, most workers kept on staring at the television screen as though hypnotized as they listened to the commentary and explanation that followed. There were a good number, however, who stole quietly away, and one minute after the Prime Minister had finished speaking, telephones began to ring all over Japan: Did you watch television? . . . Did you hear the speech? . . . Japan sinking—what do you think of that? . . . What are you going to do? . . . Hello, it’s me. Did you hear the news? . . . Yeah, I’m coming home. I’ll be right home anyway. . . . Call the children home from school. . . .
The strange thing was that there were no discussions in factories and offices. There everybody avoided each other, while some ran to the telephone and others sat thinking, looking off into space uneasily, drumming their fingers upon the tops of desks or tables.
People walked rapidly, spurred by the fear of being hit by the hard chunks of ash falling from the sky. Taxis raced by at reckless speed as though unwilling to stop to pick anyone up. Their drivers were transformed, as they listened to their radios, from men at work to fearful individuals with one thought on their minds: to get home to their families as quickly as possible.
Home! It was as though the people of this great city were crying out with a single voice as they hurried along through the rain of gray-brown ash. To get home—and then what? What could be done? Though this was the thought that loomed up dimly in the heart of everyone, no one confronted it. For now, what had to be done was to get back to one’s family. After that there would be time to think about what to do.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Japan Archipelago continued to shake convulsively. There were earthquakes registering a strength of four in every part of the country, from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Mount Aso, in the south, and Tokachi Peak, in the north, erupted at almost the same time. The tunnel connecting northern Honshu and Hokkaido had already been made unusable by flooding the previous month, and now, at the beginning of April, the rail and traffic tunnels linking Kyushu and Honshu were destroyed in the wake of a magnitude-seven earthquake which rocked Western Japan. It left the bridge over the Shimonoseki Straits so twisted that it was closed to any but light vehicles. More eruptions followed on Kyushu, and its Pacific shoreline began to sink at the appalling speed of nine feet a day. There were further eruptions in western Honshu.
In the face of all this, the people remained calm, docilely waiting to hear what the government had to say, but since the promulgation of the general plan of evacuation, there had been nothing in the way of detailed instructions. And so the days passed, and those who lived near the international airports would gather to watch the hasty departure of the big jets carrying priority personnel. Though their faces seemed without expression, their eyes, bit by bit, began to manifest growing anxiety and mistrust. Who were these people, they wondered, who were filling the planes now that the government was running everything? The rich? The families of officials? Ward-office hangers-on? How about us? Are we going to be left till last and then abandoned when things get too dangerous? They did not put their discontent into words as yet, but it grew more intense each time they saw a departing jet climbing into the sky.
They still had faith in Japan, however, still had faith in their government. Moreover, they made every effort to strengthen this faith. The government would do something. The government would not abandon them. For politicians and officials were, after all, Japanese just like themselves—a historically rooted sense of identity that everyone shared. The Emperor had had but to speak, and the war had ended. And in the present crisis the nation was waiting in submission for whatever the government had to say, giving it the benefit of every doubt. This was the fundamental spirit of the Japanese, however critical, enraged, or vituperative they could be toward their nation on occasion.
This spirit, however, was being put to the test. The possibility of panic could not be ruled out. People were tending to let their eyes rove anxiously as though looking for a way out. At first whenever two such glances would meet, there would be a quick averting of eyes. But, gradually, people began to seek each other’s eyes, as though to share their sense of being trapped. And as everyone looked on with grim, pale faces, small quakes came and went unrelentingly, and volcanic ash kept falling.