Earthquake!

by | Nov 13, 2019

 

Letter from Sydney Bruce in Yokohama to his wife Rose Mary Bruce in England, one month to the day after the Great Kanto Earthquake completely destroyed the city. Rose Mary had fortuitously left Japan for England two months prior…

46 Hariura Machi, Kobe, 1 Oct 1923

Darling,
Just had your letter dated the 23rd August, and a gentle reminder that I owe you more
than one. Have tried to write you once or twice but each time had to give it up – the
earthquake seems to have knocked all the stuffing out of me. What a bit of luck you left
here in July!! Not only prevented you from a bad shock to the nerves (although I expect
you had a bad time waiting for news of us) but you saved all your belongings, which
nobody else in Yokohama did.


The whole city and Bluff are as flat as a pancake. Dreadful sight, and it is a wonder that
so many of us are alive to tell the tale. Unfortunately, about 300 foreigners lost their
lives, quite a number among them are our friends – poor old Watson and Patterson, Tait,
Tom Abbey, Dr Reidhoad, Dr Wheeler, Dr. Ishiura, all gone.


I was on the train at the time, close to Omori Station, with Frank, Chapman and Catto,
travelling at about 40 miles an hour, and I have often wondered since how we kept on
the rails. The train pulled up eventually when we realized what happened, but we had
no idea of the extent of the damage in Yokohama, and the awful catastrophe which had
taken over the town.


We walked from Omori along the line to Kawasaki. The big bridge had sunk four feet in
the middle, and some of the bridge supports were right out of place. All this time
continuous shocks which nearly threw us off our feet, during one of which we were
passing a heavy freight train, and to see the engine being shaken as if it were a toy was
a bit scary to say the least.


From Kawasaki we took to the road. I think now this was a mistake. Nearly all the
houses were down, or partly so. And close to Tsuriumi we had to run through the fire. Of
course, it was already over, but still too hot to be comfortable. We eventually got back to
the railway again and from then on I decided to give the fires a wide berth, and as we
could not get further than Kanagawa on this account, we made for the Tokkaido in the
hope of eventually getting round the burning district and reaching the Bluff via
Nakamura. But we were too tired, and at 12 oʼclock at night found ourselves at the end
of the tram line beyond Nibombashi where we camped for the night in a field, being
provided with a couple of tatami by a Japanese whose house had collapsed, but had
escaped the fire.


At daybreak we started off again through the burnt district, a sight I shall never forget.
Great holes in the road, train rails twisted into all sorts of shapes, telephone and
telegraph wires blocking our path at almost every step. Bridges blazing away – we had
to cross one which was still burning. And tram cars, carts, and motor cars just burnt
where they stood from the time of the earthquake. Needless to say I had a very anxious
time, as I was not sure Vi and Maurice were alright. Fortunately, I knew where they
ought to have been at the time of the earthquake, but of course could not be sure. Vi, at
Yokohama Station in the car to meet me and Maurice, seeing some friends off on the
Empress of Australia. Comparatively safe places, although the pier where Maurice was
almost disappeared entirely into the harbour.


To add to our troubles it was intensely hot, and from 8 oʼclock on we got very little to
drink. However, we got out safely for which we have to be very thankful, and while our
losses are considerable – furniture, clothes and some stock in The Canadian Trading
Company – I am hoping I can recover my bonds (which were also burnt at the
Chartered Bank) as I happened to have the numbers of them in my safe at the Tokyo
office which was intact.


On arrival at the Bluff, at about 6 am, I was fortunate enough to have news of Maurice
and soon after was told that Vi was alright – Maurice on the Empress and Vi at the
Grimesseyʼs compound at Nagishi. So I sent word to her by young Geoffrey Fearon,
who just then came along, to tell her to come to the Bund(?) at once, and meanwhile
Frank, Levack and another young fellow named Heller and myself assisted in getting old
Captain Carst (who is unable to walk) down to the boat. Some funeral procession, I can
tell you (we were all dead tired and nothing to eat for 24 hours), having to climb over
fences and heaps of debris blocking the roadway, and wires everywhere.
I had previously been to have a look at the house – absolutely not a trace of anything
and about 12 to 15 feet of the bank had gone too. The one thing remaining was the
garage which had collapsed.


Iʼve been to Yokohama twice since, once to the memorial service on the 23rd
September, and again a few days later but am not anxious to go again as it has a very
depressing effect on everybody who visits it. Am enclosing a few photographs to give
you an idea of what it looks like now.


Thanks so much darling for all the trouble you are taking over the house, but am afraid
we shall have to let it go for a bit. I certainly canʼt afford anything like 1800 pounds for
one. Moreover, I cannot say when I can get home, although I should like to get away as
soon as possible but I must stay to try to recover my own property and that may take
some time, but as soon as I do I am off. Frank is also staying on for a bit, but Vi will
probably leave on the Katori Maru next month as arranged.


Just now I am oscillating between Tokyo and Kobe, as most of my staff are working in
Osaka for the next two months.


Tokyo is not quite as bad as Yokohama although miles and miles of it have been
completely destroyed by fire. Tokyo Station and all the offices in that neighbourhood are
all intact, however, likewise the new Imperial Hotel!! Although the Theatre and the big
Metropolitan Police Court were burnt out.


Sunday morning we had a rather bad shock in Kobe which sent all the Yokohama
refugees into the streets!! It was really nothing to worry about but everybodyʼs nerves
are badly shaken. So just even a door slamming is enough to give one the jumps.
Now about yourselves at home. I find it difficult to advise you. First of all I must ask you
to be careful which I know you always are, but I donʼt know what to do about Tubby.
Unless there is any real reason for keeping him at school after Christmas, I think he
should be starting in business. The expense is a heavy one for me now and he will be
nearly 17 and quite time he should make a start. Please consider this very carefully and
decide as promptly as possible, and also make inquiries regarding my brother if you can
and try to get those fees reduced. Bruces, _____ I think weʼll be together very soon and
they must do more than they have done hitherto.


Well, no more now. [Itʼs] nearly 11 oʼclock and I am tired. Weʼre dossing in a godown(?)
at present!! and Vi at the Libeaudʼs quite comfy and all well.

Lots of love and heaps of kisses
from your devoted
Hubby

Cattleboat Hell

by | Nov 13, 2019

Frank with his two brothers Maurice and Geoffrey work the summer of 1925 on the Canadian prairie, then take the train to Vancouver, BC in late fall. Jobs are hard to find and on Christmas day, Frank throws in the towel and catches a train east. He is England-bound. In Montreal, he greases the palm of a sleazy Swede in the railyards and gets on with the cattleboat Manchester Producer as a cattleman, feeding and handling the cattle on board. His passage home is assured …or so he thinks.

A brutal January storm breaks the ship’s rudder and for three weeks the ship drifts broadside to the breaking seas. Fearful of capsize, the captain orders all cattle and pens on the decks be thrown overboard to reduce windage. Calls for help bring nearby vessels but all attempts to secure a tow line in the heavy swells fail.

The tug fought through a Thousand Miles of Ocean Gales to Succor the Crippled Tramp – And We Sipped Hot Tea While the Cook Slept

I steadied myself against the edge of the iron bunk while the ship rolled heavily to port; as she regained the vertical, I l;eft the forecastle and stepped on deck into the cold wind. Inside, my fellow cattlemen slept uneasily in their clothes, breathing stertorously a close, damo atmosphere loaded with the mingled smells of cow, unwashed clothing, stale tobacco and the apples we had borrowed from the cargo below.

The night sky was brilliantly starred: the January wind still blew strong and steady over the Atlantic from the northwest. The ship, her rudder quadrant broken, lay as she had drifted for three weeks now, helplessly rolling broadside to the heavy swell. Each tremendous wave, rushing at the ship as she listed under the pressure of the wind, dealt her a smashing blow, and passed beneath us. Down the wind-fretted back of the wave she slid, trembling into the trough; listed again and waited for the buffet from the next onrushing wall of water.

 Now or Never!

Pulling up the collar of my old army greatcoat, I hung over the lee rail to watch the dim white crests of the waves leave the ships’s rail and with a hiss and a heave, leap away into the darkness.

I was pretty sure it was a hail that had brought me on deck; but we were in mid-Atlantic where hails are few. Sure enough, lights were dancing to leeward. Stately, swaying, they rode for a moment on the wind, then plunged with a sideways swing, and the next moment were again flung skyward. I dived back into the forecastle and punched a shapeless mass of blankets, clothes and sacking on an upper bunk. “Hey Bill! Goldern you; wake up. Here’s the tug.”

Groaning protests, Bill rolled out, yawned himself into cap and sweater. We went outside together.

The watch was already on deck. The tug had come a thousand miles and more to fetch us, had found us at night in mid-ocean. She was ready now to hook onto us in a sea that we had already seen during the previous two weeks, break like twine the three inch steel hawsers passed to us by other ships, salvage bent.

The tug came in close, hailed us again and told us to stand by to receive a line. Her searchlight showed our Old Man on the bridge, megaphone in hand. He yelled in a hoarse but surprisingly loud voice that it couldn’t be done – better wait til daylight. The answer, blurred by the wind, came booming back: “You take my line now or I’ll leave you.

The Old Man’s “OK” was the last of that laconic argument.

A Mighty Flail

Up forward, the crew were busy with the anchor winch. Spare hawsers were already coiled on the foredeck. Two days before, as another ship was preparing to tow us, the heavy hawser had parted. The end of the steel hawser converted instantly into a mighty flail, whipped around the bollard and disappeared overside, leaving the carpenter’s mate in a huddle on the deck with one leg nearly severed at the ankle.

 “I’ll cut your throat”

I felt in an inside pocket for cigarettes. Bill and I leaned against the rail next the cowshed and watched the crew lugging cables for’rard along the heaving steel deck. From the after-deck, littered with smashed cowshed and a tangle of wire ropes, with the dead steers still wedged between the winches and the hatch, they dragged the heavy rope. Past the galley door where we were wont to wait for the inevitable stew and the tea with coffee grounds; past the engine room door whence the negro stoker had flown by me with his razor the night before while the second engineer dived into his cabin for a gun, appealing to me over his shoulder as a witness:

“You heard that black devil say he’d cut my throat, didn’t ye, hey?”

Past the fiddley they lugged the heavy cable: the fiddley where in bad weather we let go our hold on the lifelines rigged along the deck and dived for the warmth of the stokehold, only to be soaked again as we descended by flying masses of brine from windward, which plunged throught the gratings and dripping steel ladders to the shining deck of the dim stockhold below. Past the steward’s pantry they dragged they dragged the cable forward, where we would go to draw rations and where the floor was still wet with the water that had flooded down from the smashed chartroom through the sacred saloon.

Bill and I smoked and gladly watched the crew working.

The wind pressed coldly upon us, but not with the solid, irresistible force it had shown during the worst of the weather.It had blown then miraculously from a clear steel-blue sky upon a grey and racing sea. It hadblown with incredible intensity and steadiness; now flatenning the seas with it weight, now whipping the flying spume up over the windward taffrail, heaved high as the ship listed, whipping it horizontally across the deck.

Bill and I finished our smokes.

Fishing for the line

Very soon the tug would send a line aboard.  She would do it by the simple process of slinging overboard to windward a lifebuoy with the line attached. the ships would drift faster than the buoy and we would fish for it with lines weighted with iron shovels or bars as soon as we had drifted down upon it. We began to get cold; our interest in the proceedings waned with every chilling moment.

Apple Pie

“Tea Bill,” I said, and we moved off in the direction of the galley. Making tea had to be done at some time between midnight and three in the morning, when the vituperative, whisky-ridden cook was snoring in his bunk. Ham, our tame cattleman-actor had even baked an apple pie at these unearthly hours. To be sure, the apples had been stolen from the cargo and cooked without sugar; and the crust made from the cook’s flour without fat, but in the circumstances it was a culinary triumph. Ham himself had brought me a piece and awakened me to eat it. After the first enthusiastic bite, one ate the rest out of love for Ham and respect for his remarkable achievement.

While Bill stoked up the big iron range with its railed top, I took a small saucepan, slid forward again to within earshot of where the mate was still grunting orders, and slipped below. I moved quickly aft along the rows of cattle between decks, assailed by the cloying smell of the animals, and of wet hay, and from the already rotting apples in the hold.

Near the end of the long line of weary, weaving animals stood the little Black Angus cow that had presented us with a shiny black calf a week before. With this single gesture she had attained a popularity with the entireship’s company, who whoile glad of the calf as a pet, were still more pleased at the prospect of having fresh milk in their tea.

Competition for the milk waxed fierce between thesaloon, the sailors and the cattlemen. Fortunately for the calf, it was a point of honor among the warring foster brothers to see that the calf was fed first. After that, it was anybody’s milk. Hence, it was as necessary to do our milking while the crew worked and the steward slept, as it was to wait until the fat and unmpleasant cook wassafe in the arms of Morpheus before making tea.

The calf was fed

It should be explained that tea as Ham made it, or as we made it, and as the cook mad it for Ham and us, were not recognizable as the same beverage.

The calf was fed. I took a cupful of milk in the saucepan, tied up the calf to the stanchion, fed the little black cowcrushed apples in a pail and hied me with my booty to the galley.

Hot good tea

The tea was strong and fragrant. We sipped gratefully, warming our backs at the stove, which had been generously stoked by the big-hearted Bill. My hands at the cup smelled of the apples and the cow. Over the cups we regarded ourselves with pleased and perfect understanding. Tomorrow. we thought, after three weeks adrift, we shall be limping south to the Azores. Moving slowly as we shall be,it is true; moving at hardly a man’s walking pace behind the tug from Queenstown that found ships in mid-ocean and made their skippers hook on at night. The sea would go down. Every day it would get warmer. Perhaps we could even lie on the hatch in the sun and watch the sailors chipping paint. Meanwhile the drunken cook was asleep and we had hot tea with no stale coffee grounds in it and made too, with fresh milk.

Cattle Ship Perils

by | Nov 13, 2019

Cattle Ship Perils

Morning Post, London, March 20, 1926

Crew’s Terrible Experiences

Refuge in the Stokehold

Food Shortage

The story of a cattleman’s experiences on board the Manchester Producer, published yesterday exclusively in the Morning Post, has caused widespread interest.

The cattleman in question was Mr. H. A. L. Berry, a younger brother of one of the heads of Berry Bros. and Co., wine merchants, of St James Street, has supplied further details of his experiences. His story is corroborated by a young Englishman, Mr S. F. Bruce, a student of agriculture in Canada, who was also on board the Manchester Producer.

Mr Berry states that he was in Montreal, with the intention of taking a trip home to England, in January last. He was thinking of booking a passage when one of his friends suggested that he should ship on a cattle boat. The life was not easy; but he had lived and worked hard in Canada, and was not afraid.

“I was given the address of an agent in Montreal,” he said, “who arranges for the provision of men for the cattle steamers. I went to see him and he told me he would arrange a passage for me for ten dollars. This would cover my passage across the Atlantic and my food; I would also be able to ship back to Canada on a boat of the same line. He then landed me a slip with my name and the date, although the amount which I had paid him was left blank. No questions were asked of my fitness or experience in handling cattle.

Men of All Trades

“I met my fellow cattlemen at St John’s. They were of all trades and professions — farmers, mechanics, businessmen, an actor and others.  There was only one experienced cattleman in the party. The weather was [adverse] with deep snow on the ground, and the temperature was well below zero.

“When we got on board, we were herded into the saloon, and various papers were spread before us on the table. We were told to sign, and I asked what the papers were. I was informed that the signatures were for purposes of identification only; later in the voyage, however, we were informed that they were ship’s articles, which committed us to work, such as the cleaning out of the cattle pens and other work which we had not expected to do. 

“I now understand that before a man signs his articles they are read to him and the nature of his duties explained. This was not done, however; and it was not until towards the end of the voyage to Fayal that we were expected to do this work of cleaning out the pens.

“All the time that I was on board I did not see a life belt, nor did we have any lifeboat drill, even during the days when it was calm enough.

The Night Watch

I was appointed night watchman, and I was expected to see that the animals on deck were fairly comfortable during the night. But I had no electric torch or light of any sort provided for me, and it was impossible to see what was happening to the animals during the night. I carried on as best I could.

“We carried a veterinary surgeon on board; but we had no humane killers of any sort, and when the storm broke out and some of the cattle were maimed it was necessary to put them out of their misery. One of the crew hit the animals repeatedly on the head with a small hammer; they went down under the blows, but stumbled up again. It was a hideous sight, and we all thought it was more merciful to fling them overboard.

Refuge in the Stokehold

“Our own sufferings were unbelievable. When the storm was at its height we could hardly venture across the top deck. If we did we were flung from side to side and drenched with icy water. One heavy sea broke down a portion of the top deck, extinguishing the lights in the quarters of some of the crew and swamping them with water. One of the men was rather badly hurt, and they all thought that the end had come. They managed to escape, however, to the lower decks.

“We had deserted our quarters in the forecastle after the first night. The cold there was too intense.; so we installed ourselves on the lower deck, amid the hay provided for the cattle. Our real home, however, was the stokehold. When we came down from the deck, half-frozen, sore from buffeting, and almost blind with misery, this dingy black hole was a haven of warmth and comfort to us. We could at least dry our clothes and our bodies by the fire, while the negro stokers were great chaps.

The Negroes’ Prayer

“Few of us had any hope of seeing land again. Our rudder was broken and our steering gear was out of order. Our wireless too was out of action for a time. But these niggers were extraordinarily cheerful, with a strange kind of fatalism. They kept their mandolins whining pleasantly all the time — better music than the howl of the waves and the wind. They were true philosophers; one old darkey said to me ‘Dar’s de ship, an’ de waves; de cattle, de humans an’ de God; an’ Ah thinks de God will win.’ That was their prayer; all of us I think said prayers of some description.

“The misery of the cattle too was weighing upon us. We could, at least, grumble and sing, swear and pray; but these poor dumb beasts cold only stand there, in the filthy pens which had not been cleaned for weeks, and watch us as we brought their daily-diminishing supply of fodder and water to them. They must have been almost frozen; and it was probably the kindest thing to those on the upper deck to fling them overboard.

Spirit of the Men

“But the spirit of the men on board, in general, was immense. The officers and engineers would come down and talk to us in the stokehold. They were not over-sanguine, I think, of our chances of getting through; but they kept telling us that we were on a good ship, and that we wouldn’t go down. The apprentices and the steward, who knew something of wireless too, stuck to their posts night after night, until eventually they got it in order, and we were able to send out messages.

“The cook and his assistant worked all day in a galley awash with water, and managed to keep us alive. After awhile, when supplies started to run short, we broke open one of the holds, and ate some of the apples and the patent foods stored there.

“I wanted to say a word, too, about the assistance of the ships that came to our rescue. There were five of them altogether, and each one of them stood by and helped as best as they could. It was nobody’s fault that they could not take us in tow. The Mongolian Prince was herself running short of food, and she had to pick up one of the animals which we had thrown overboard and kill it for food.”

[World copyright reserved]

Forest Morning

by | Nov 13, 2019

Morning in the Forest

I spend my days now in the woods and on the mountainside, and share the deserted trails of the black bear with the occasional deer, and a still less frequent visitor, Brere Rabbit. Early every morning, I leave behind me the blue spirals of breakfast fires in the valley, and with two companions, strike out along the railroad to where the forest comes down to meet us. 

We are three silent men in the morning, and trudge along with mailed boots crunching on the trodden snow. Charlie, as the man in charge, goes ahead. With hands in pockets and bent head beneath a battered hat, he lifts his feet as though he would leave his footprints deep in the iron ground. Youthful James, in his old green mackinaw, with a piece of his twenty-first birthday cake in his lunch-box, ambles mentally from breakfast to geology, from his mother’s last letter to the prickly spruce we found yesterday; half bemused by these waking thoughts and the faint persistent vestiges of dreams from which he had been torn not an hour before, he stumbles occasionally in his heavy boots. The rails at our feet slide by in monotonous procession, alchemised by a frosty nacreous patine from common steel to a dull silver. 

The air is still and cold. Morning is detained as yet by dying night, though the stars have faded half an hour since. A cold transparency washes the shadows from their last tenebrous refuges among the trees and in the westerly hollows.

At the shed, we leave the track and take a steep and snow-covered trail through the slashing. Here, the protective influence of the trees has extended a little way on all sides into the clearing. Where the snow has dwindled, the foot sinks into the moist, re humus of the trail. Presently, no more than an occasional patch of snow lingers by a moss-covered log. Jack Frost, with his silver brush, has here laid a Parthian touch upon the farthest dead leaf, and fled upon the wind to the open hillside. The trees engulf us as we climb. Before morning is fairly come night has half stolen upon us under their leafy roof. To us they are now the innumerable pillars of a dim and damp cathedral, guarding the dark arcana of nature.

A squirrel, alarmed at our invasion, chatters at us suddenly from a great hemlock. With tail erect, he jerks his small body from one frozen attitude of defiance to another. Where our trail crosses a tangle of fallen trees, we find ourselves upon an old pack trail, broad and evenly covered with brown leaves. In places, young trees stand insolently in mid-road, vanguard of the silent sylvan army waiting on either side to close ranks in ineluctable reclamation. 

Where we stop to rest, warmed now and out of breath, the air is full of the sound of rushing water. For many days now we have worked within earshot of this heedless, hurrying mountain stream, with its swift passage in contrast to our own deliberate moves. 

Later today, in a stony spot near the water, we shall build a fire of dry cedar, lit from dead twigs with their parasitic murderer, the beard-moss, dead in turn and still clinging. The water for our tea, in the old black and battered pot, will have been caught in its flashing leap between the glistening, spray-drenched boulders. Thin sunlight will be in the tree-tops then, hardly filtering to the mossy ground; while the faint blue and fragrant smoke of our fire, starting with an eager leap from the flames to the moving air, will float leisurely between the trees.

Address: Box 176, Tunnel Camp, Britannia Beach, B.C.

Earthquake: S Bruce

by | Oct 19, 2019

This letter from Sydney Bruce in Yokohama was written to his wife Rose Mary Caldwell Bruce in England, one month to the day after the Great Kanto Earthquake completely destroyed the city. Rose Mary had fortuitously left Japan for England two months prior, taking their most valued possessions with her. Three of the Bruce’s four adult children were in Yokohama at the time. Sydney apologizes for his poor letter writing, explaining that the earthquake has “knocked the stuffing out of me.” No doubt he is experiencing post traumatic stress.

46 Hariura Machi, Kobe

1 Oct 1923

Darling,

Just had your letter dated the 23rd August, and a gentle reminder that I owe you more than one. Have tried to write you once or twice but each time had to give it up – the earthquake seems to have knocked all the stuffing out of me. What a bit of luck you left here in July!! Not only prevented you from a bad shock to the nerves (although I expectyou had a bad time waiting for news of us) but you saved all your belongings, which nobody else in Yokohama did.

The whole city and Bluff are as flat as a pancake. Dreadful sight, and it is a wonder that so many of us are alive to tell the tale. Unfortunately, about 300 foreigners lost their lives, quite a number among them are our friends – poor old Watson and Patterson, Tait, Tom Abbey, Dr Reidhoad, Dr Wheeler, Dr. Ishiura, all gone.

I was on the train at the time, close to Omori Station, with Frank, Chapman and Catto, travelling at about 40 miles an hour, and I have often wondered since how we kept on the rails. The train pulled up eventually when we realized what happened, but we had no idea of the extent of the damage in Yokohama, and the awful catastrophe which had
taken over the town. We walked from Omori along the line to Kawasaki. The big bridge had sunk four feet in the middle, and some of the bridge supports were right out of place. All this timecontinuous shocks which nearly threw us off our feet, during one of which we were passing a heavy freight train, and to see the engine being shaken as if it were a toy wasa bit scary to say the least.

From Kawasaki we took to the road. I think now this was a mistake. Nearly all the houses were down, or partly so. And close to Tsuriumi we had to run through the fire. Of course, it was already over, but still too hot to be comfortable. We eventually got back to the railway again and from then on I decided to give the fires a wide berth, and as we could not get further than Kanagawa on this account, we made for the Tokkaido in the hope of eventually getting round the burning district and reaching the Bluff via Nakamura. But we were too tired, and at 12 oʼclock at night found ourselves at the end
of the tram line beyond Nibombashi where we camped for the night in a field, being provided with a couple of tatami by a Japanese whose house had collapsed, but had escaped the fire.

At daybreak we started off again through the burnt district, a sight I shall never forget. Great holes in the road, train rails twisted into all sorts of shapes, telephone and telegraph wires blocking our path at almost every step. Bridges blazing away – we had to cross one which was still burning. And tram cars, carts, and motor cars just burnt where they stood from the time of the earthquake. Needless to say I had a very anxious time, as I was not sure Vi and Maurice were alright. Fortunately, I knew where they ought to have been at the time of the earthquake, but of course could not be sure. Vi, at Yokohama Station in the car to meet me and Maurice, seeing some friends off on the Empress of Australia. Comparatively safe places, although the pier where Maurice was almost disappeared entirely into the harbour.

To add to our troubles it was intensely hot, and from 8 oʼclock on we got very little to drink. However, we got out safely for which we have to be very thankful, and while our losses are considerable – furniture, clothes and some stock in The Canadian Trading – I am hoping I can recover my bonds (which were also burnt at the Chartered Bank) as I happened to have the numbers of them in my safe at the Tokyo office which was intact.

On arrival at the Bluff, at about 6 am, I was fortunate enough to have news of Mauriceand soon after was told that Vi was alright – Maurice on the Empress and Vi at the Grimesseyʼs compound at Nagishi. So I sent word to her by young Geoffrey Fearon, who just then came along, to tell her to come to the Bund(?) at once, and meanwhile Frank, Levack and another young fellow named Heller and myself assisted in getting old Carst (who is unable to walk) down to the boat. Some funeral procession, I can
tell you (we were all dead tired and nothing to eat for 24 hours), having to climb overfences and heaps of debris blocking the roadway, and wires everywhere. I had previously been to have a look at the house – absolutely not a trace of anythingand about 12 to 15 feet of the bank had gone too. The one thing remaining was the
garage which had collapsed.

Iʼve been to Yokohama twice since, once to the memorial service on the 23rd September, and again a few days later but am not anxious to go again as it has a very depressing effect on everybody who visits it. Am enclosing a few photographs to give you an idea of what it looks like now.

Thanks so much darling for all the trouble you are taking over the house, but am afraid we shall have to let it go for a bit. I certainly canʼt afford anything like 1800 pounds for one. Moreover, I cannot say when I can get home, although I should like to get away as soon as possible but I must stay to try to recover my own property and that may take some time, but as soon as I do I am off. Frank is also staying on for a bit, but Vi will probably leave on the Katori Maru next month as arranged.

Just now I am oscillating between Tokyo and Kobe, as most of my staff are working in
Osaka for the next two months.

Tokyo is not quite as bad as Yokohama although miles and miles of it have been completely destroyed by fire. Tokyo Station and all the offices in that neighbourhood are all intact, however, likewise the new Imperial Hotel!! Although the Theatre and the big Metropolitan Police Court were burnt out.

Sunday morning we had a rather bad shock in Kobe which sent all the Yokohama refugees into the streets!! It was really nothing to worry about but everybodyʼs nerves are badly shaken. So just even a door slamming is enough to give one the jumps. Now about yourselves at home. I find it difficult to advise you. First of all I must ask youto be careful which I know you always are, but I donʼt know what to do about Tubby. Unless there is any real reason for keeping him at school after Christmas, I think he
should be starting in business. The expense is a heavy one for me now and he will be nearly 17 and quite time he should make a start. Please consider this very carefully and decide as promptly as possible, and also make inquiries regarding my brother if you can and try to get those fees reduced. Bruces, _____ I think weʼll be together very soon andthey must do more than they have done hitherto.

Well, no more now. [Itʼs] nearly 11 oʼclock and I am tired. Weʼre dossing in a godown(?)
at present!! and Vi at the Libeaudʼs quite comfy and all well.

Lots of love and heaps of kisses

from your devoted

Hubby