Tonoyamamachi's Terror

When the earth began to rumble and mongrel dogs to moan in little Tonoyama-machi, suburb of Osaka, one bright afternoon last week, experienced citizens ran from their huts and houses crying "Jishin! Jishin!" (earthquake). But out in the streets they found their guess not horrible enough. The air was filled with a noise louder than thunder, with a light brighter than the sun, with flying bits of steel and brick far more deadly than the debris which falls during earthquakes. The people knew that the earthquake was manmade, and that its epicentre was the great Army ammunition depot near by.

Blast after deafening blast rocked the neighborhood, and with each blow the sky flashed. brighter. Flames spurted up all over the village, spreading fast on an angry north wind into the neighboring factory town of Hirakata.

Not until late at night could rescue crews go into the village, for like a pile of firecrackers, ammunition dumps sputtered and banged erratically long after the main fireworks were over. When at last some sort of order was restored, there was little to be done but gruesome counting: 48 known dead, 32 at the point of death, 440 seriously injured, 800 homes destroyed, 8,313 persons left homeless. Completely wrecked was an insane asylum.

Next day War Minister Lieut. General Seishiro Itagaki stood up before a Parliament which just a few hours before the explosion had been told to shoot the Japanese budget skyhigh, appropriating 4,600,000,000 yen (about $1,242,000,000) for war. Expensive as the accident had been, said General Itagaki, it would "not interfere in any way . . . with the sacred war in China." Neither did the mysterious fire in December which razed an aviation training station at Yonago (cost: 150,000 yen) ; or, later, the explosion and fire which wrecked an Army powder factory at Maebashi. No one, it seems, knows what caused any of these accidents to Japan's armament program, but some war-weary Japanese guess sabotage.

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