Natural Disaster: The Earthquake

When I was 21 years old, I lived through the Great Hanshin earthquake (6.9 magnitude, 7.3 on the Richter scale) in Kobe, Japan. I moved to Japan for my first job after college. I lived in a small apartment a few train stops from my office in a town called Ashiya where occasionally you could spot wild boars that had come down from the nearby mountains. I returned to the US for Christmas and came back to celebrate the New Year with friends I had met as an exchange student who had come to Kobe to visit. Everyone crashed in my small apartment.

I had started to make some friends in the Kobe area too, and on January 16, a holiday in observance of Coming of Age day, went ice skating with a group from church. The following morning, before the sun had come up, I was awakened by the feeling of my apartment shaking, and heard furniture in my living room tipping over. Great, I thought, I’m probably going to be late for work cleaning up this mess, and decided to go back to sleep because it wasn’t even 6 am yet. And then I started hearing more sounds outside - glass breaking, a woman screaming. I heard voices outside my door as people started checking to see if anyone was hurt. I began to realize this was something really serious. I remember leaving the building because it was a little shaky - I lived on the second floor and part of the stairwell was broken. I grabbed some random food items like a loaf of bread, and followed the neighbors to the local community center.  The small traditional home next door to my building had collapsed and it was unlikely that the residents could have survived.

My Japanese was decent by that time, but I felt lost and unsure what to do. The people were friendly but not used to foreigners. Eventually I was able to go back into the building. My landline was still working (this was before cell phones were common) and I was able to get through to a friend from work who lived in the same town. She lived in a newer apartment building that was in better shape than mine, and she invited me to come over. I was grateful for the shelter and company. It was a relief to have a friend, and we slept nervously through the first night with the front door slightly open (so it would not get stuck while closed if there was another earthquake). Sirens blared in the background, and there were frequent aftershocks. I found it amusing that in the past, I never felt the minor earthquakes when I lived in the Bay Area in California, but now I was very sensitive to any minor movement of the floor. My friend was from Osaka, where her parents still lived, and we decided to head to their house, which apparently was not impacted by the earthquake.

The next morning we made our way to the nearest train station and found piles of rubbles and collapsed tracks. We kept going, walking through what felt like a war zone, and after a couple hours found a functioning train station. When we arrived in Osaka, maybe 20 minutes away, I was stunned to see life going on as normal in the bustling station. I had grabbed a few items in a bag and that was all I had. It was such a relief to finally arrive at my friend’s parents’ home, where we could have a warm bath and meal.  This was during the early days of the internet, so word about the earthquake did not spread quickly outside of Japan. I remember calling a friend in the US to let her know I was okay, only to find out she had no idea what I was talking about.

After a few days of recovery, I got in touch with others from work and learned that the railway that connected Rokko Island, where the P&G Far East office was located, to the mainland had collapsed, and we were temporarily moving to an office in Osaka. I was fortunate that my employer put me up in a hotel. I was a poor recent grad and even one night at a hotel would have been hard for me to cover on my own. 

In the months that followed, I moved around from hotel to hotel a few times, and we got used to working in the temporary space. We learned that over 6000 people died and there was devastating damage to buildings and infrastructure. I received some financial support from the local government as well, which was a nice surprise. I was literally shaken up and unsure whether I would stay in Japan after this, but I didn’t have any idea where I would go or what I would do. Eventually, I decided to stay since I had been in Japan less than a year at that point. I ended up staying three more years, and in that time I saw the city of Kobe rebuild, and witnessed the resilience of the residents. I had the chance to volunteer during Golden Week, a period with four major holidays in a row. We helped residents to clean up the damage of the earthquake. Some had gone away temporarily and were just coming back to scope out the damage. I made a good friend who had come from another part of the country to help. I was reminded that human life is so much more precious than things.

I moved out of my apartment to an even smaller place. It turns out that although the Ashiya building had partially collapsed, it was fixable and the building was salvaged, but I still moved on. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and many parts of the world went into lockdown, I often recalled my first experience with a mass crisis, and believe that surviving and recovering from the Great Hanshin earthquake often helped me cope.