Rescue Efforts Produce Tears and Triumphs

For two days, the team of Self Defense Force soldiers in khaki fatigues and helmets had clawed away at the debris of the collapsed home. Underneath, an elderly woman with heart disease lay buried.

When they finally pulled her out at midmorning Wednesday in the earthquake disaster area of Nishinomiya, on the outskirts of Kobe, the soldiers covered her body with a blanket. To the small crowd of anxious families and friends gathered at the scene, the meaning was clear: The rescue was too late.

The soldiers placed their hands together and bowed as the SDF vehicle bearing the body drove away. Yasuko Tsunemine, the woman’s daughter, tearfully approached them.

“I’m sorry for the trouble,” she said, her face lined with grief. “Thank you very much.”

Gathering their picks and shovels, their ropes and saws, the SDF team moved on. As Japan reeled under the effects of its worst earthquake in nearly 50 years, there was still another site, another rescue, another triumph or tragedy awaiting the soldiers.

As daylight broke on the disaster’s second day, there was a visible boost in regionwide rescue efforts.

Teams of soldiers in green uniforms, police in blue and firefighters in red fanned out, armed with digging tools and walkie-talkies, to try to extract the thousands of people still believed trapped. They came by ship, helicopter and truck from Tokyo, Hiroshima and other areas of Japan.

Sgt. Ryuji Kitamura said virtually all of the 2,500 SDF troops based in nearby Itami and Senzo had been mobilized for disaster efforts in 800 different areas.

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Makoto Yahara, 24, was one of them. A member of the Disaster Dispatch No. 36 team, he had worked on six sites since arriving Tuesday morning from Itami.

Five victims were recovered dead. But one was still alive--a triumph Yahara said gave him a greater sense of purpose than his usual daily routine of gun and cannon training.

Still, he said, the work was initially shocking.

“I felt resistance to dealing with corpses,” he said. “Even now, I can’t look straight at their faces.”

Most of the SDF teams are focusing on recovery efforts at smaller homes, where they can more easily dig through the wreckage with hand-held tools.

But at one site, several soldiers sat idle. Around them, the personal mementos of an anonymous family lay scattered in the parking lot, their life on public display: Godzilla videos, books on the game of go, a Japanese doll and samurai helmet, rice bowls, slippers, a single red apple.

The soldiers said they knew a body was crushed under the second floor, but the wreckage was too heavy to remove without a crane.

“We can’t do anything with our hands,” one said.

Corporate volunteers also joined the massive effort.

In Kobe, workers from Mitsubishi Heavy Steel operated a giant crane to try to lift out the estimated 30 vehicles still stranded atop the collapsed Hanshin Expressway. A 1,600-foot stretch of the thoroughfare had toppled over, its huge concrete pillars snapped at the base.

Under the highway as well, the wreckage of smashed vehicles remained, including a bus from Daiei Central Marine Products. Workers blasted the concrete around the bus to remove the driver’s body.

One Mitsubishi worker said the firm, based in Kobe, had dispatched about 30 people to help with the highway rescue efforts. Most of them had slept overnight in the nearby office so they could begin the day’s work at the crack of dawn.

“You don’t have to be told by your boss to come help dig out the corpses,” the worker said. “You feel a moral obligation to help out.”

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Emergency vehicles jammed the streets, ferrying rescue workers and supplies throughout the region.

At the Disaster Center at Nishinomiya City Hall, workers formed human convoys to unload and move the boxes of donated food, water and blankets starting to pour into the area.

On a blackboard in the City Hall, the outlines of the rescue efforts were carefully logged: 1,060 rescue workers deployed; eight SDF vehicles; 6,165 blankets received; 40,761 evacuees in 170 places.

Yasuyuki Abe, city spokesman, said the lack of running water remains the single greatest problem. Although bottled water is being rushed in from throughout Japan, the shortage is preventing everything from surgery to toilet-flushing to cooking. And it may take days, perhaps even a month, to get water running again because, in addition to broken water pipes, the area’s three reservoirs are all heavily damaged, he said.

Traffic gridlock remains the biggest obstacle to both delivery efforts and rescue operations, Abe added. Most of the trains are still halted, and two of the region’s four main thoroughfares have been shut down.

“We are paralyzed,” he said. “The more life becomes convenient, the more trouble people have in these kinds of situations. Convenience becomes an Achilles’ heel.”

Abe acknowledged that the region’s rescue efforts were hampered by a near-total lack of readiness.

The city had prepared an earthquake plan, but he said it was mostly pro forma because no one ever really believed that such a disaster would hit this area. Instead, officials had more fully prepared for a water disaster, such as a typhoon or river flooding.

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Although the area remained remarkably free of looting, Abe said there seemed to be a growing feeling of frustration among people in evacuation centers over the delay in receiving water, food and other supplies.

Modern Japan took on the appearance of a war-ravaged nation, as streams of people wandered through the rubble-strewn streets on foot and on bicycles, clutching bags of clothes and food. Most stores remained shuttered, except for convenience stores selling out of virtually all food and drink. Vendors drifted in, setting up sidewalk stands purveying roasted sweet potatoes and grilled octopus.

As night fell, the bright glow of sidewalk fires stood out against the darkness. Clusters of friends and families huddled on sidewalks and in parks, gathering bricks and wood from the debris to make fires over which they cooked rice and fried scraps of meat and vegetables.

Masaru Yamamoto, 52, lost his $400,000 home. He and his family of three were planning to sleep in their car. But on this night, they would forgo the long lines and meager fare facing thousands of others at the evacuation centers and have a meal of hot fried rice cooked over a sidewalk fire.

In a world turned upside down by 20 seconds of shaking, such simple fare is now a luxury.

Researcher Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

* RELATED STORIES: A10-11, D2