1 Sep 1923 2 minutes to noon
Yokohama/Tokyo
Maurice Bruce, on arriving back in England, relates his experiences of the earthquake to a journalist. He was likely staying with his grandmother, Mary (Mitchell) Caldwell in Hull, Yorkshire. This seems to have run in the Yorkshire Post.
Some Grim Incidents
Thrilling narrative of the fall of Yokohama
The claim of Mrs. Henderson of Yokohama to be the first British woman survivor of the Japanese earthquake to arrive in England is already disputed. Mrs. Cranch of Yokohama, who has relatives in Hull, arrived in the SS Minnedosa on Thursday, two days earlier, though, of course, Mrs. Henderson could not be aware of that when she described herself as the first arrival.
Mrs. Cranch is a member of an English family which settled in Japan in 1911. Her brother, Mr Bruce, went out in that year ______________ and was joined there by his wife and three children. They have lost everything in the disaster and the fate of three members of the family is still uncertain. Mrs. Bruce sailed for England from Japan immediately before the earthquake and so escaped it. Her son, Mr. M Bruce, an employee of the Rising Sun Petroleum Company, who arrived in England with Mrs Cranch, owed his life in all human probability to the fact that he happened to be on holiday at the time of the shock. His sister, who was one of the staff of the General Electric Company, equally certainly escaped death through the circumstance [that she departed] the office one hour earlier than usual. Otherwise, she would have been on the fourth floor when the huge building collapsed.
It is, however, to be related in this connection, that another member of the staff, Mr Marcus Colter, who was standing in a doorway on the third floor when the collapse occurred, descended with the falling building and landed absolutely uninjured, Though almost choked with dust. Many staff were less fortunate. Sydney Bruce and his eldest son were in Tokyo at the time of the shock. The first thought, naturally, was to get to Yokohama to learn how their relatives had fared, but they found that every means of ordinary travel was cut off. They therefore trudged the 18 miles to Yokohama.
The hoped-for reunion did not take place because they arrived to find everything in unspeakable confusion. Mr M Bruce, who relates these facts, was by this time on a boat in the harbour. His sister, with other refugees, was sent to Kobe, roughly 200 miles away, and at the other side of the island. Mr M Bruce afterwards heard ____Kobe____ and that they had been seen by a friend on a passing ship, but beyond this, he and his mother have absolutely no tidings of them. There is good reason to hope, however, that they are quite safe.
Relating his own experiences, Mr M Bruce said to a Yorkshire Post representative that he was on the pier bidding goodbye to some friends who were about to sail on the Empress of Australia. He was one of the many people doing so and most of them, though by no means all, escaped death or injury in this way. Thee was a slight shock, then a heavy one, and then the huge pier collapsed, although the portion of the structure where the liner was berthed was left intact. After recovering from the shock sufficiently to observe things — a matter of a few moment — he looked landwards and rubbed his eyes in horrified amazement. The magnificent city had crumbled into ruin.
[The rest of the article is missing. It appears to be from the Yorkshire Post]