KWR Book Review

Joshua Hammer, Yokohama Burning: The Deadly 1923 Earthquake and Fire That Helped Forge the Path to World War II (New York: Free Press, 2006). 313 pp. $26.00.

Reviewed by Scott B. MacDonald

Looking for a good read?  Joshua Hammer’s Yokohama Burning should fit the bill.  A veteran foreign and war correspondent for Newsweek, he has written an interesting page-turner on the worst natural disaster to strike man during the twentieth century.  The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred at two minutes before noon on September 1, 1923. It set into motion a train of events that “killed 140,000 people (including hundreds of Americans and Europeans), burned two cities to the ground, unleashed tsunamis, floods, mud slides, and avalanches, and stands as an apocalyptic vision of Japan’s eternal instability.” Eclipsed by more violent man-made destruction during the 1930s and 1940s (the Sino-Japanese War, the fire bombings of Japan’s major cities and the nuclear bomb used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima), the 1923 earthquake was partially responsible for later horrors. In a sense, one major act of destruction led to another.

Hammer provides a step-by-step build-up to the earthquake, providing a panoramic view of the various characters he has tracked down and provided a breath of life.  This includes both Japanese and foreigners. After the quake strikes he focuses on the heroic action of some and the sad xenophobic riots against the country’s Korean minority.  Indeed, the xenophobic and violent nature of ensuing events underscores one current flowing through Japanese history.

One of the most interesting parts of Hammer’s book is his treatment of Yokohama in 1923 as a pivot point in Japanese history.  The city emerged as a major center of trade and commerce, a critical element in maintaining and deepening relationships between Japan and the outside world.  It was also a place of intrigue and espionage.  As Hammer notes: “Smugglers of human cargo prowled the docks, packing steamships full of desperate Asians bound illegally for North America.  Gunrunners, Korean independence agitators, Bolshevik propagandists, Indian anticolonialists, and other activists all conspired in Yokohama, pursued by immigration officials and the secret police.”

In addition, Yokohama’s pivotal role was reinforced by the large foreign community, mainly Western, that had settled in the port.  In that regard the destruction of Yokohama removed an important counterpoint to a streak of xenophobia existent in Japanese society.  As Hammer observed: “The destruction of Yokohama and the dispersal of the port’s American and European population slammed shut the window into Western society that had inspired a generation of artists, writers, intellectuals, and other liberal-minded Japanese.”  Along these lines, the end of that community helped push Japan (along with other factors) down the path to the invasion of China and Pearl Harbor.

Hammer further argues that the disruption of Japanese society strengthened the hand of the military, which was a strongly nationalistic, aggressive and xenophobic force.  As he noted: “Many of the officers who rose to positions of authority in the earthquake’s aftermath would play prominent roles in the radical antidemocratic groups that formed in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the same groups that would lead the country to war.”  Certainly the reluctance to allow foreigners into Yokohama to help in the aftermath reflected a tendency not to admit weakness.  All the same, the use of the telegraph meant that the entire world soon knew of the horrible destructiveness visited upon Japan.

The value of Hammer’s book is reinforced by solid firsthand research. This entailed examining letters, diaries, and other items that belonged to Lyman Cotton, the American naval attaché in Tokyo in 1922-23, an unpublished manuscript written by an American missionary who had narrowly survived the fire in Yokohama, and tracking down a handful of survivors.  The lively writing style, extensive research, and placing the event in its historical place contribute to making Yokohama Burning a fascinating read of a terrifying event. It is still significant in today’s world of growing ecological and geopolitical worries.