Link 1995 10 (Vol. 45, No. 3).pdf - DRC Home - Wilmington College

Alumna Survives Japanese Earthquake
Masumi Akaishi
is a 1972 graduate of
Wilmington College,
where she majored in
philosophy and religion
and minored in
French and German.
She later earned
a master of arts degree
in philosophy from the University of
Toronto and a master of arts degree in
modern social and cultural studies from the
University of London, where she served as a
part-time teacher of Japanese. She worked
at the University of British Columbia before
returning permanently to Japan in 1979.
Akaishi teaches cultural studies at Kobe
Shinwa Women's University. The academic
discipline involves cultural theories, literary
criticisms, structuralism and post-structuralism.
She has two children, Yoshiko and
Joh.
Akaishi has maintained a long-time
friendship with WC's professor emeritus T.
Canby Jones and his wife, Eunice. The couple
was especially concerned upon hearing of
the devastating earthquake that hit Kobe,
Japan, last January; however, they were
relieved to learn Akaishi and her children
were safe. The following story was written
from information contained in letters received
by the Joneses from their Japanese
friend earlier this year.
She opened her first letter by matter-offactly
stating: "1 live in Kobe and experienced
the earthquake."
I remember now that a great many
birds were chirping unusually intensely in
the Rokko Mountains in the early morning
of the 16th of January. There were noticeably
many birds and their behavior was
strange enough to make me sense that something
was about to happen.
I woke up with an indescribably horrible
thud and shake. A 7.2 magnitude
earthquake attacked the Hanshin. Nobody
was prepared for this surprise attack!
Right after the terrible thud and shake,
it was completely dark and absolutely quiet.
There were no sounds of the usual morning.
I wanted to call my family in the next room,
but I could not she ut — my voice did not
come out. I was frozen. I was so shocked
that I did not even know whether I was alive
or not, or where I was.
It was a very scary moment, which I
will not, and cannoi forget for the rest of my
life.
We live in the north of Kobe, so our
house did not fall down. The north of Kobe
is built on a mountainside and the houses are
built on the rock.
But, 5,000 buildings and houses collapsed
all at once and, in total, more than
150,000 houses and buildings fell down
because of aftershocks. More than 270,000
people lost their hames. More than 5,500
people died — 9C percent of them were
crushed to death and the rest were burned to
death in fires that broke out because of gas
leakage.
There were not enough crematoriums.
More than 30,000 people were injured.
The railways, expressways, roads, harbors
and sea walls were prodigiously damaged.
Two man-made isl inds, the Port Island and
the Rokko Island of Kobe City, sank 60
centimeters and the grounds of both islands
were liquified.
It will take tfree to four years for all
public transportation to recover fully. The
amount of debris from the individual houses
and company buildings will be 18.5 million
tons, which will be used for the reclaimed
ground around the Kobe coastline. The cleanup
will cost the government an estimated
4,000 hundred mil ion yen.
What made tie disaster worse is that
the Hanshin area was said to be one of the
safest areas considering earthquakes. The
Hanshin Expressway was advertised to be
strong enough to sustain the shocks of the
strongest possible earthquake; however, it
collapsed.
The houses end buildings were not
strong enough to stand such an earthquake.
Fires broke out and there were not enough
water pipes and the y were not big enough to
extinguish such big fires. The roads were
not wide enough for many fire engines to get
through all at once.
Residents of 857,400 households were
without water, gas and electricity for three
weeks, and half of those remained without
gas into the spring. In April, more than
200,000 people were still living in tents or in
a classroom gym of a school in their neighborhood.
Prefabricated houses with about
25 square meters of floor space were being
built for the time being.
Yoshiko and Joh's international school,
the Canadian Academy, is on the man-made
Rokko Island and a mono-rail called the
Rokko Liner is the only transportation to
connect the Rokko Island and the mainland.
The Rokko Liner was damaged by the earthquake
and wasn't expected to be running
until summer at the earliest.
Right after the earthquake, we did not
know whether the Canadian Academy would
reopen or close down since most students
left for their home countries. The administration
made the decision of trying to reopen
the school.
The only bridge for cars to go through
between Rokko Island and the mainland
was also damaged. It takes more than two
hours to get to the Canadian Academy, but
Yoshiko does not complain of the inconveniences
of going through the crowds, debris
and heavy traffic. She is working very hard
to complete her 11th year of school.
Joh has been living with one of the
faculty member's family near the Canadian
Academy since the earthquake. It is too
much and even dangerous for him to commute
between our house and school. He
comes home on Fridays for the weekend.
One teacher at my university, Shinwa
Women's University, was killed. One of our
students, her mother and her brother and
sister were killed. One of the students is still
in the hospital and she may be a wheelchaired
person for the rest of her life.
The earthquake has affected all of us in
the Hanshin area both physically and emotionally,
and, for many, it has disrupted
work and caused financial worries. The feeling
of depression grew bigger and bigger
after the shock to meet the concrete tasks of
cleaning up, arranging things and doing a lot
of other chores.
On the other hand, we realize very
strongly that if all of us — friends, strangers,
neighbors and relatives — work together,
we will reconstruct Kobe and rebuild the
city to be more beautiful and strong!
The Link 21