Twenty years ago on Jan. 17 at 5:00 a.m., I awoke and began my morning routine of making coffee and sitting down to a good book. I was actually lying down, as I lived in 4.5 tatami mat room and my bed also served as my couch. I had returned to Japan on 15 January, following a trip to the United States to celebrate Christmas with the family. It was the first time to be home in more than two years.
While home in New Jersey, I had transitioned to decaffeinated coffee, but as I did not have any with me in my student dorm in Toyonaka City, Osaka Prefecture, I used regular coffee. About 40 minutes later after I poured my first cup, my body started vibrating and I got very jumpy. I thought it was the effect of the caffeine, but when the Earth started roaring, the building rumbling, the room shaking, and the furniture and items in my room jumping and flying around, I knew it was not the coffee.
It was the magnitude 6.8 earthquake that damaged much of Kobe and southern Hyogo Prefecture, later known as the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, that killed more than 6,000 people, including two of my classmates. One was Jun Kudo, who was on the path of becoming a great scholar of political science, and the other was Wataru Mori, who seemed destined to become a star reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun.
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