Marilyn Quayle Examines Volcanic Island

Marilyn Quayle didn’t follow the instructions left in a memo by the White House staff to bring her sturdiest jogging shoes to Friday’s outing on a volcanic island south of Tokyo.

She opted instead for more fashionable blue leather flats, but that didn’t stop her from leading the charge up a steep pile of lava rock.

With a trail of Japanese scientists, U.S. Secret Service agents, White House staff members and reporters running to catch up, Quayle hiked up a caldera on Mt. Mihara, the island’s active volcano that last erupted in 1987.

Friday’s outing was the main event in Quayle’s natural-disaster activities on a five-day trip to Japan with Vice President Dan Quayle.

While the vice president attended a meeting in Tokyo of the conservative International Democratic Union, Marilyn Quayle toured this tiny island of farmers and fishermen to focus attention on what she called a lifelong interest in natural-disaster prevention.

“Being born and raised in Indiana, one can’t help but be aware of the havoc nature, especially tornadoes, can wreak, and the human disasters that are caused,” she said.

In November, 1986, 11,000 people were evacuated from Oshima, about 70 miles south of Tokyo, after hundreds of earthquakes rocked the island and Mt. Mihara erupted, sending a stream of molten lava into the air.