a couple of pictures from Kobe, 1995 and…

 

In reference to this entry.

 

My apartment, part of a "long house" was here:

As a matter of fact, where this blank space is, there were three apartments, mine, the neighbors, and the local veterinarian’s office. I took this picture after a ten day stay in the hospital in Kobe – my home disappeared while I was there. The hospital stay was unrelated to the quake, thankfully, but it was to have a cyst excised from my lower spine that went from just a bump to a bleeding thing that HURT. In Japan, they have national health care, not some bullshit make money off you insurance whores, and that ten days didn’t cost me all that much. Making a profit off my health – or anyone’s, lands you a reserved space in hell. Hell must be an American enclave now. Not a point for pride.

My parents in law’s house was not very damaged, compared to my place; this is the second story which was a place dedicated to ancestors:

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The foundations of my place:

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My apartment, in the "long house", dated from the war years.

Some of these newspapers on the inner walls of my place dated from the early 1940s.

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In the days after the quake, I cleared a path of sorts through the roof tile rubble that littered my street:

Fortunately, those heavy roof tiles slid off my roof instead of falling into the apartment like they did in so many other places. Many people died in their homes, trapped by roof tiles. The truly unfortunate were trapped and burned to death in the fires that swept Kobe.

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Sogo Department store downtown in San Nomiya was heavily damaged:

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Other buildings in the shopping area were damaged or destroyed:

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So far, I have lived through several big earthquakes: this one in 1995 in Kobe, Japan, and a couple when I was a kid in California, in 1972 in the San Fernando quake, and a couple others that were nowhere near as powerful or as destructive as the one pictured here.

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What happens when a building crushes things – or you?

That was a six foot tall vending machine full of coffee drinks and sodas. It’s crushed nearly flat. You or I would be too.

Earthquakes are no joke, and a far more powerful than we are. These should be teaching respect for the earth, because it does not care about us at all.

The prime lesson from this quake and from my life?

There are no safe places.

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And…

It is very possible that I saved my neighborhood from the fires that swept through Kobe that day, because I went house to house and shut off all the gas valves I could find. Fire is the killer after the quake.

Another possible neighborhood saving action of mine:

My parents in laws house is and has been a central point in the ‘hood; it has a small shrine on the corner, and the Buddha had toppled out of his home and had his head broken off by the fall. I straightened his house and put him back in it, and set his head on his shoulders and wrapped his robes around him, to keep the head in place.

Our neighborhood did not burn; fires there never started. I like to think I had something to do with that; if nothing else, I hope I pleased the neighborhood god enough for him to spare our homes.

By the way, people came by after the quake and were amazed at the god, sitting in his shrine, seemingly unharmed and in good shape. He hasn’t ever been replaced.

 

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