Local Residents Fear for Family, Friends in Kobe : Quake: Phone-line damage leaves Japanese Americans anxiously awaiting word from the disaster area.

Wrought with worry and fear, Orange County residents of Japanese ancestry saw the news photos Tuesday showing the chilling earthquake destruction of Kobe, Japan, where the dead, injured and missing numbered in the thousands.

Scores of Japanese Americans, many with relatives or friends in the danger area, tried to go about their business as usual, strolling into favorite restaurants and markets. But more than usual, they were talking fervently and sharing information--any information.

Mitsui Yamata, a poet from Cypress who has relatives in Tokyo and has lectured at a university in Japan, said she had tried to telephone Japan, but without success.

“I called several of my colleagues who teach at a university in Kyoto, which is not too far from Kobe, but all the (telephone) lines are tied up,” said Yamata. “I also tried faxing and couldn’t do that either. So, I’m writing letters. Hopefully they will get through.”

At the Ebisu market in Fountain Valley, which caters to a largely Asian clientele, clerk Tim Hansen, 21, whose mother is Japanese, was stunned.

“I used to live there, I was shocked!” Hansen said. “We didn’t expect it to be this big. We were told Japanese freeways would withstand any kind of quake. We didn’t expect it would bend down like melted candy.”

On Tuesday, it seemed as if the store, as well as restaurants and other locations frequented by Japanese and Japanese Americans in Orange County, turned into hubs for earthquake news.

By early Wednesday, authorities said the death toll had exceeded 1,800, while more than 11,000 were injured and nearly 1,000 were reported missing.

At Ebisu, stacks of the Yomiuri, a Tokyo-based newspaper that arrives daily in Orange County and costs $2.25, had been placed out front of the store for customers. In Orange County, many of the more than 240,750 Asians--which represent 10% of the population--are of Japanese ancestry.

“All my high school friends are in Kobe, I’ve known them since kindergarten,” said Hansen. “Tonight, I’m going to call a number in a Japan news agency to check on their computers, hoping to find out whether they are alive or missing.”

Hansen said once he finds out what happened to his friends back in Kobe, “I would probably just get a plane ticket as soon as possible. I don’t know what I can do but just go take a look to see if they’re OK, if they need help.

“My cousins and uncles live in Osaka. They said they shook real bad but nothing was broken down.”

Manager Joe Takeda said Japanese customers were asking each other if they had relatives near Kobe and whether they had heard if the quake had damaged other areas.

“Everybody’s talking about it,” Takeda said. “But it’s all the same, you can’t get through because the phone lines are down.”

With communications difficult, particularly to the hard-hit cities of Kobe and Osaka--where many Japanese Americans have family connections--uncertainty numbed those desperate for information.

Mihoko Nagahara of Fountain Valley said she did reach her parents for five minutes in their house in the countryside north of Kobe.

“I called my parents at 4:30 p.m. (Monday). My father said they had a very strong shake but they have no damage. That was very good,” Nagahara said. “Then I tried to reach my sister in the western part of Kobe, closer to the center of the earthquake, and my brother near the central part of downtown, but I haven’t been able to. I think their buildings are pretty strong. That’s my only hope.”

The American Red Cross of Orange County fielded numerous calls from local residents anxious to get information about relatives in Japan, Red Cross spokeswoman Judy Iannaccone said.

Inquiries were referred to the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles where a list of confirmed deaths is being gathered, said Miriam Stenshoel, a consulate spokeswoman. Stenshoel said the consulate will have updates on names of the deceased that it is receiving from government offices in Tokyo.

U.S. and Japanese corporations--both major donors to relief efforts after the Northridge quake--have again been quick to offer assistance.

“The people of Japan reached out to help us in our time of need and now we are honored to do the same for them,” declared Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, who will serve as honorary chairman of the just created Osaka/Kobe Earthquake Recovery Fund.

In Laguna Hills, when retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph S. Herold heard that Kobe suffered mass destruction, he shook his head and thought to himself, “Oh, no. Not Kobe again.”

In 1945, as a captain assigned to a special pictorial unit in the Signal Corps, Herold photographed the rubble that was left of the Japanese cities of Kobe and Osaka after World War II.

Herold returned as a civilian in about 1986 and photographed the region, and produced a 25-minute documentary videotape contrasting how both cities looked in 1945 and in recent years.

“I have a friend over there now, an interpreter who I met right after World War II and he’s up in years, like me,” said Herold, 75.

A radio talk show host hit an emotional nerve on Tuesday afternoon after he asked whether people should give money to Japanese quake victims when there are people “in our own back yard” in Northridge who are quake victims and others who have become victims of the Orange County bankruptcy.

A spokesman for KMPC-710 “Talk” program host Joe Crumey, said their phone lines “went off the hook” and that reaction among listeners was evenly split.

“We had people who were basically sympathetic to those in Japan and a lot of people who felt that we should help those people in Northridge first,” said Bill Lennert, a spokesman for KMPC in Los Angeles. “A lot of people felt that the Orange County bankruptcy was a man-made disaster and that made a difference with how they felt about Northridge and overseas.”

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Quake Questions, Relief

Here are some sources of information about the earthquake in Kobe, Japan:

* Japanese Consulate (Los Angeles): Has list of dead and will continue to update with new information, (213) 617-6700

* Inquiries about U.S. military stationed in Japan: Contact American Red Cross in Orange County, (714) 835-5381

* For family members living in or visiting Japan: U.S. citizens call (202) 647-7310 or (202) 647-7311

To contribute money to help quake victims: * American Red Cross, Japanese Relief Fund; (202) 639-3315

* American Red Cross “Japanese Relief” O.C. Chapter, (800) 842-2200 or P.O. Box 11364, Santa Ana, CA 92711-1364

* California Community Foundation, (213) 413-4042

* Japan-America Society, (213) 627-6217

* World Vision, (800) 423-4200 or P.O. Box 1131, Pasadena, CA 91131

Sources: Japanese consulate; Red Cross; individual organizations