The Great Kanto Earthquake: A wall of fire, a picture of hell

Records indicate the weather that morning 100 years ago was a mixture of drizzle interspersed by clear, blue skies, after a typhoon-induced rainstorm subsided during the night. It was nevertheless turning into another hot and humid day, and people were preparing for lunch when, at 11:58 a.m., a gigantic convulsion estimated at a magnitude of 7.9 struck off the southern coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, rocking the capital, the neighboring city of Yokohama and beyond.

Homes swayed, roof tiles rained on the ground and electricity poles reeled. Fires soon broke out amid the many collapsed wooden structures — exacerbated, likely, by the fact people would have been using stoves to cook their lunches — and quickly spread to more than 130 locations covering all 15 wards of Tokyo. Plumes of smoke darkened the skyline and, fueled by strong winds from a passing typhoon, the many fires began merging into raging infernos, engulfing entire neighborhoods.

In Sumida, residents called on each other to evacuate to the site of the former military clothing factory, which seemed to be a perfect, open space to seek shelter. They retrieved important belongings and furniture from their homes and hauled the objects over to the field, using them to create makeshift barricades. Now, they could just wait for the fire to burn itself out — or so they hoped.

A few hours and several major aftershocks later, the blaze reached the depot, surrounding the evacuees with a wall of fire that quickly spread to their clothes and possessions. More than 38,000 people were burned alive then and there — accounting for over half of the death toll Tokyo recorded, and a third of the total of 105,385 people who perished.

The Pogroms

In the days that followed the Kanto quake, many Koreans, as well as Chinese and Japanese mistaken for being Korean, and Japanese communists, socialists and anarchists were killed by military, police and paramilitary forces.

They were acting on rumors that Koreans were staging riots, setting fires and even poisoning wells. According to a 2008 report compiled by the government’s Central Disaster Management Council, the death toll from the massacre is estimated to account for “one to several percent” of those who perished in the earthquake, which translates to anywhere from around 1,000 to several thousand people.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/08/31/japan/history/1923-tokyo-earthquake-anniversary/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kant%C5%8D_earthquake