Word: kobe
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...woman? Ryoji Tachio, a reporter for the daily Tokyo Shimbun, was curious. Armed only with the photo, he set out last week in Kobe to find her. After hours of scouring shelters for the homeless and asking passersby, he came upon a center for the elderly in the working-class district of Nagata. There he saw a slim woman pouring tea for quake victims. She looked older than in the photo, but when Tachio showed her the picture, she recognized herself by the striped pajama trousers and black-and-white jacket she had been wearing when the photo was taken...
...aftershocks are not always physical, the damage not always measured in coffins and cracked pillars. Just as the port city of Kobe stirred painfully back to life last week from the quake that killed more than 5,000 people and left 300,000 homeless, a psychological temblor hit the Tokyo exchange. On the blackest trading day in nearly four years, the Tokyo exchange's Nikkei average shed 1,054 points, or 5.6% of value, as investors began to size up the blow Japan had suffered. Among the army of construction crews that moved in to occupy Kobe last week...
...whole got such a serious jolt. One of Japan's most important industrial and transportation centers had been shattered in the 20 seconds the quake lasted. Aside from the destruction of its port facilities, which served as a gateway for about 10% of Japan's overseas trade, Kobe's trains, its elevated highways and much of its basic utilities lay in ruins...
...initial rescue effort was slow to get moving, adding to the human tragedy, the clearance-and-rebuilding campaign was not. Thousands of workers and battalions of heavy equipment streamed into Kobe. The government announced it had begun building 19,000 housing units, though that will fall far short of present needs. Most important, Kobe's residents seemed to be recovering their native determination. ``People seem calmer,'' said Ichizo Kubo, 74, the owner of a building-supply shop. ``They have shared the experience of the quake and seem ready to work together...
...boomlet of sorts was already visible. Kobe's streets filled with men wearing hard hats and the distinctive uniforms of Japan's leading construction firms. Mammoth earthmovers and jackhammers chipped away at the wreckage of collapsed buildings, while welders fused support bars to cracked and buckled overpasses. Workers were clearing rubble and forging new routes around it. Akio Himeji, an executive of the Yoshida Gumi, a marine- construction company, supervised a pumping operation at the docks to provide emergency water supplies. ``I think,'' he says, ``the next few years will be like the postwar recovery. Our company grew...