It was on the morning of April 30, at ten minutes after five, that the first cataclysm struck the Osaka-Kyoto area. Never before had an earthquake of this kind been recorded. Never before had a quake struck so vast an area.
Of a total population of 30 million in the four prefectures that made up the district, 3.5 million had already been evacuated by sea and by air during a thirty-day period preceding the quake. The new Osaka Airport had been overwhelmed by the encroaching water, and there was no choice but to fall back upon the old airport at Itami. By dint of frantic round-the-clock labor, the runways, damaged in the previous quake, were made ready to take the huge jet passenger planes just before daybreak on March 1. All the ground crew and other personnel from the now-defunct domestic airlines were put to work here, and soon planes were taking off and landing at the rate of some 500 in a twenty-four-hour period. With the aid of the United States Air Force, close to 500,000 people were flown out of Japan during this period, a figure unprecedented in the history of aviation.
During the period the sinking of the Pacific coast and the rise of the Japan Sea coast became much more pronounced, and the harbor facilities, especially at Kobe and Osaka, suffered immensely. Consequently, in most cases the loading of refugees had to be done with the transport ships anchored either offshore or in rivers, and every sort of small vessel that could be found was pressed into service to ferry the refugees out to the ships, from landing craft to old-style fishing boats. And despite all the obstacles, in this month some 3.2 million people were evacuated. The district evacuation headquarters, however, was determined to spare no effort to raise the rate to 5 million a month. The June rainy season would slow air transportation, and with August and September would come the ever present danger of typhoons.
The day the quake struck, at dawn on April 30, refugees whose turn had come had been massing at the airport and at the harbor all through the previous night. Those not so lucky, their mood desolate, were sleeping fitfully in their homes while light quakes succeeded one another without let-up. Their bags were packed and their personal goods gathered together, in anticipation of their turn coming or of an emergency evacuation.
Buses and trucks arrived at the airport, one after another, and silent refugees, loaded with baggage, streamed into the terminal. Tents had been pitched in front of the terminal, and flight numbers were posted on each. Police and airport personnel kept order in the long boarding lines. The adults were white-faced and silent. Since it was so early, infants were sleeping on their mothers’ backs, but little children frolicked about as though they were on an excursion.
And along the flooded coastline of Osaka Bay, at Kobe, Ashiya, Sakai, and other ports, and, along the banks of the Yodogawa and Anjigawa, similar scenes were being enacted. Osaka Bay was filled with ships of every nation, a vast number of them freighters or even ore boats hastily converted to take passengers. Ship after ship got under way with a dull, rumbling whistle, the water boiling up at its stern, and turned its bow toward Kii Strait and the open sea. The screeching, piercing whistles of the tugs that guided them echoed beneath a leaden sky.
At 5:10 A.M., a Sabena Boeing 707, making its approach from the southeast, landed on Runway B at Itami. The refugees waiting in the terminal fixed their eyes upon the jet as it taxied by them, the roar of its engines’ reverse thrust filling the air. At that moment those by the windows saw a white flash light the overcast sky.
Down by the harbors the people aboard ship saw the flash more clearly. Like a brilliant curtain of white, it rushed from east to west along the southern horizon, silhouetting the surrounding mountains as far off as Kii, Awaji Island, and Shikoku. Three times it raced from east to west and back again, touches of purple and green flickering here and there against the whiteness. A surge of dread went through the crowds.
The captain of the Okuma Maru, a 26,000-ton freighter loading passengers from one of the still-usable piers in Ashiya Harbor, had just come up onto the bridge, rubbing his sleepy eyes and yawning, when he heard a deckhand yell something. He turned to look at the southern sky, and the next instant he was jamming his finger against the emergency alarm button.
“Start engines!” he roared to the watch officer. “Prepare to cast off—emergency procedure.”
His mouth agape, the watch officer relayed the command to the engine room.
“The passengers—how many of them are still not on board?” yelled the captain, grabbing hold of the purser, who had come running up to the bridge at the sound of the ship’s siren.
“About two hundred. They’re coming on now.”
“Hurry it up. Put more men on it. The gangplank goes up in five minutes. We’ve got to get out of here as quick as we can. Get the radioman. Have him call the transport office and tell them we’re getting under way at once. Blow the whistle and let the other ships know. We’ve got to get out to the open sea.”
“What’s happening?” asked the startled purser.
“You damn fool! Chances are we’re going to get hit with a tidal wave.”
The boarding passengers had stopped in their tracks at the sound of the alarm, but crewmen with megaphones now rushed over the pier, hurrying them on board. It was then that the first shock struck. A terrified cry went up from the crowd standing on the half-drowned pier, and the violent up-and-down motion of the quake caused two or three people to lose their footing and fall into the water.
“Prepare to get under way,” said the captain to the watch officer. “We’ll go with the diesels. There’s no time for the turbines.”
The Okuma Maru’s whistle, like the sinister moan of some monstrous beast, echoed against the dark sky. The captain took hold of the portable speaker and called down to the pier: “Get those people out of the water. There’s still time. Another quake is coming. But take care in coming on. Don’t get excited.”
Then he turned to the deck crew: “Loosen the hawsers! Relay it to the stern. Prepare to cast off.”
On a runway at Osaka Airport the captain of a Pan Am 747 jumbo jet, loaded to capacity with 490 passengers, had just opened his four engines to full thrust and had started his quivering 350-ton plane on its takeoff run when the first shock struck.
Cups flew from a table in the control tower, and so violent was the up-and-down motion that some lights went out.
“An earthquake!” someone yelled. “Stop Flight 107. Don’t let it try to take off.”
It was evident even from the tower, however, that the plane had already reached a speed of well over 100 miles an hour. The air controllers watched through the rattling windows of the tower as the huge body of the plane began to shake with a rising and falling motion, its wheels bounding slightly. The chief controller’s face turned ashen as he gripped the microphone.
“Aren’t you going to stop him? What are you doing? Hurry!” shouted another controller in a frenzy. He tried to snatch the microphone away, but the chief controller pushed him roughly aside. The chief controller had been in the tower at Haneda Airport in Tokyo when a passenger plane landed at the very moment the great quake began. He knew how quakes behaved, and thus made his decision. The epicenter of this one had to be very close, and even if the runway was long enough for the Pan Am jet to come to a stop, the second shock wave would hit with disastrous effect before it was able to do so.
Flight 107 attained a speed of 115 miles per hour, then 140, its great mass bouncing up and down. Its wheels seem to leave the ground and then touch down again as it bounded along.
God help them!
Modern skeptic though he was, the chief controller’s heart cried out at that moment. He thought of the captain and copilot bent over the controls in the cabin, their eyes fixed on the end of the runway toward which their huge plane was hurtling at full throttle. As the distance remaining melted away, the captain would have to make his decision, and the point of no return was rushing to meet him.
Take off! the chief controller shouted within himself. In a brief moment his whole body had become wet with sweat. Don’t stop! Give it all you’ve got! Get into the air. Don’t get caught!
“He did it!” somebody yelled.
The chief controller brushed the sweat from his eyes as he watched the giant plane’s front wheels lift off, followed by its sixteen main wheels, with a bare fraction of the huge runway remaining.
“To all planes on the ground—this is the tower,” said the chief controller into the microphone. “Emergency! Cut your engines. An earthquake is coming.”
At that instant there was a sound like a thunderclap, and he was thrown from his chair.
“Take over for me,” he said in a hoarse voice to a colleague who came to his assistance. “Put the planes waiting to land in hold patterns. And get out of here. There’s a rough one coming.”
The first shock wave passed. No sooner had it done so, however, than up from the depths of the earth there came an uncanny groaning sound. The control tower, struck with a dreadful force, spun around as though upon a giant turntable. The assistant controller shouted desperately into the microphone to the planes circling above, but his voice was lost amid screams and crashes and the awful rumble of the earthquake.