Natural Disaster: The Earthquake

[edited 4/2/26 for clarity]

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 had moved to Japan for my first job after college just six months earlier. I lived in a small apartment a few train stops from my office in a town called Ashiya, where you could occasionally encounter wild boars that had come down from the nearby mountains. I came back to the US for Christmas and returned to Japan celebrate the New Year with friends from Tokyo I'd met during my semester abroad in college who wanted to visit Kobe. Everyone crashed in my small apartment.

I had just started to make friends in Kobe, and on January 16, Coming of Age day, I went ice skating with a group from church. The next morning, while it was still dark, I awoke to violent shaking in my apartment and the sound of my furniture falling over. Great, I thought, I’m probably going to be late for work cleaning up this mess, but I promptly fell back asleep; it was before 6 am.

Then I heard glass breaking, a woman screaming nearby, and voices outside my door as neighbors started checking to see if anyone was hurt. It slowly dawned on me: this was serious. I remember leaving the building because it felt shaky in my second floor apartment and part of the stairwell was broken. I grabbed a few random food items like a loaf of bread, and followed my neighbors to the local community center.  The small traditional home next to my building had collapsed—it was unlikely anyone had survived.

My Japanese was decent by that time, but I felt lost and unsure what to do. People were friendly, but not accustomed to interacting with foreigners. Eventually, I went back into the building. My landline was still working (this was before cell phones were common) and I was able to reach my work friend Sachiko, who lived in my town. She lived in a newer apartment building that was in better condition than mine after the earthquake, and she invited me to come over.

I was grateful for the shelter and company. It was a relief to have a friend with me in the aftermath of the earthquake. We slept anxiously with the front door slightly open so it wouldn't get stuck in case of another earthquake. Sirens blared in the background all ight, and there were multiple aftershocks. Ironically, when I lived in California before this, I never felt the minor earthquakes. Now, I was hypersensitive to every minor movement vibration. Sachiko was from Osaka, and her parents still lived there, so we decided to head to their house, which wasn't damaged by the earthquake.

The next morning, we headed out on foot to the nearest train station. On the way, we encountered piles of rubbles and collapsed railroad tracks. We kept going through what felt like a war zone, and after a couple hours we found a functioning train station. When we arrived in Osaka, about 20 minutes away, I was stunned to see everyone going about their normal routines in the bustling station, as if nothing had happened. It was surreal.

I had packed a few items before leaving my apartment, and that was all I had. It was a relief to finally arrive at Sachiko's parents’ house, where we could take a warm bath and enjoy a hot meal. 

This was during the early days of the internet, so new about the earthquake spread slowly outside of Japan. I called a good friend in the US to let her know I was safe, only to discover she had no idea what I was talking about.

After a few days of recovery, I got in touch with other co-workers and learned that the railway that connected the main island to Rokko Island (where the P&G Far East office was located) had collapsed, and we were temporarily relocating to an office in Osaka. I was lucky that my company put me up in a hotel. I was a broke 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 lived in a few different hotels from Osaka to Kyoto, and we settled into the temporary space. We learned that over 6000 people had died and the damage to buildings and infrastructure all over Kobe was devastating. 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 only been in Japan for less than a year at that point. I ended up staying three more years, and during that period I witness the rebuidling of Kobe and the resilience of its residents. I had the chance to volunteer during the Golden Week holiday, helping elderly residents to clean up the earthquake damage in their homes. Some had left town and had just make the emotional journey back home for the first time to assess the damage. I made a good friend Kyoko who had come all the way from Miyagi prefecture to help. It was a sobering reminder that human life was worth so much more than material possessions.

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

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the world went into lockdown, I often reflected back on my first experience with a mass disaster in Kobe, knowing that surviving and recovering from the Great Hanshin earthquake had equipped me to better cope with future ordeals.