Hell at Hakodate

A 70 m.p.h. gale out of the North screamed across Hakodate Bay as the shadow of night ran across the city, slid up the pine-covered face of Hakodate Head and The Peak, and enfolded the secret forts on the heights. The crows flapped up from the garbage in the slums to be whirled helplessly to the base of the two peaks, where they dropped on limp wings. Children hung their snow sleds beside the door and squatted down to a Hokkaido (Japan's New England) supper of fish, beans and rice. In the Bay a forest of masts swayed wildly. But wind and cold are nothing new to the citizens of Hakodate, Japan's ninth biggest city and enterprising port of a northern island that is nearly the climatic counterpart of the Canadian Northwest.

Dipping into the workers' quarter, the gale found an iron stove pipe that was loose in its stone collar, sticking out of a peasant's window. Angrily it ripped out the pipe, broke the window. Inside the hut, flame leaped high, licked the thatch ceiling, quickly gobbled up the whole hut. The gale pulled out the flame like taffy, spread it over the next hut and the next.

Hakodate's great wind last week marched Hakodate's great fire down the sandy isthmus of the poor folk, to the office buildings, hotels and banks along modern Ginya Boulevard, through the fine houses of the residential section, up to the base of the peaks. First to burn was the power house and out went all Hakodate's lights. Soon after the wireless station went, shutting the city off from the world. With the flicker of flames over their shoulders, crazy mobs stampeded down the dirt streets. Frantic little firemen ran toward the fire, hosed impotently. turned and ran for their lives. The wind-driven fire chased one mob toward the wharves, up to the water-edge and over into the Bay. Scores drowned. The fire caught others and incinerated them in their tracks. In the early morning the Mayor got a message to the outside world: "The wind has subsided slightly. Through the darkness refugees are fleeing from death, abandoning their belongings. A living hell has been created."

With dawn the fire had feasted fully on Hakodate. The bodies of the drowned were coming in with the morning tide, nudging the wharves. Blackened, blank-faced men groped over the steaming ruins. A sharp sleet was falling. Soon it turned to snow. The survivors huddled in barracks on the peaks, in a few schools still standing, in the railway station and the British and Russian consulates. Some strayed out on the bleak mainland, looking for shelter in the huts of the aboriginal Ainus. Sixty of them died in the snow. Officials began doing their terrible sums. They made it: 1,500 dead, 2,000 injured, 23,000 buildings destroyed. Of the living, 23,000 were homeless.

In this worst fire since Tokyo's in 1923. Japan's expensive army and navy came in handy. Before the fire was over, four destroyers arrived in Hakodate with 5 1/2 tons of army biscuits, 3 1/2 tons of canned meat and 15,000 blankets. By morning the wind had subsided. And down from the peaks flew the cawing crows to see what had become of Hakodate.

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