After the second world war, Japan was vulnerable, so we had a lot of natural disasters, especially Typhoon disasters from 1945 to 1959. Some call this 15 years a great flood and storm era(see the below figure). The first hit was Typhoon Makurazaki in Sep. 1945*.The typhoon disrupted Hiroshima city. There were 1229 casualties in the city. This fact reminds us of what happened in Hiroshima in the same year. The atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima city on August, one month before the typhoon. During the war, we had no weather forecast system because of the military’s reasons. The people in Hiroshima were living in vulnerable houses because they were hardly hit by the bomb. They did not have enough info. about the Typhoon’s coming also**. Therefore, this typhoon disaster is a complex disaster which consists of natural disasters and human-made disasters aspects***.
Figure: The Number of Deaths and Missing Persons Caused by Natural Disasters
*Hiroshima Pref. Website:
http://www.bousai.pref.hiroshima.jp.e.bq.hp.transer.com/www/contents/1318849427179/index.html
http://www.pref.hiroshima.lg.jp.e.bq.hp.transer.com/soshiki/100/makurazaki.html
**A Blank in the Weather Map by Kunio Yanagida:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Blank_in_the_Weather_Map
Kunio Yanagita was a Japanese scholar who is often known as the father of Japanese native folkloristics or minzokugaku.
***Day_23: The Definitions
https://disasterresearchnotes.site/archives/2355
