26 Tell It Like It Is, by Dr. Robert D. Eldridge The December 1946 Shōwa Nankai Earthquake (1) The majority of Japan’s major and highly destructive earth- quakes tend to hit at this time of year, from September to March. Recent examples include the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 in the Tōhoku area, and the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake in Kobe in January 1995, both of which I was involved in the response in oficial and unoficial capacities. (For details on these quite different disasters, see Takashima Tetsuo [Translated and edited by Robert D. Eldridge], Megaquake: How Japan and the World Should Respond [Potomac Books, 2015].) The worst disaster to strike Japan in modern times also happened during the above period, in September 1923, when as many as 142,000 people are said to have died. In line with the pattern of earthquakes striking more frequently during this time of year, some seventy-one years ago this week, there was a particularly destruc- tive earthquake and tsunami off the coast of the Kii Peninsula, south of Wakayama Prefecture and Osaka and to the southeast of Shikoku Island. The Magnitude 8.0 earthquake, which was the third largest earthquake to date in modern Japanese his- tory to that point, triggered a large tsunami and caused a total loss of life of more than 1,360 people. The name given to this natural disaster was the Shōwa Nankai Earthquake, with Shōwa (or “enlightened peace”) representing the era, and Nankai (or “south seas”) representing the region. Readers will have heard the name Nankai in the context of the “big one,” the Nankai Trough Earthquake, expected to kill approximately 325,000, according to a study released by the Government of Japan’s Central Disas- ter Management Council (Chūō Bōsai Kaigi) in August 2012. In the case of the 1946 earthquake, it reportedly had ive times the destructive power of the 1923 quake and caused at least six tidal wives in the tsunami that fol- lowed. The destruction was also widespread; some twenty-ive prefectures, more than half of the country’s total forty-seven, experienced damage of some sort, with tidal waves affecting an area of 60,000 square miles across approximately ifteen prefectures. As seen in the table below, Wakayama and Kochi Prefectures were the worst hit with 187 and 670 killed respectively and nearly 1,000 injured each. Most ex- posed to the Paciic Ocean in that part of the country, these prefectures, incidentally, were some of the irst local authorities, along with Shizuoka Prefecture, on which I concentrated my efforts to coordinate the Disaster Cooperation Program I launched in 2011 following the Great East Japan Earthquake to promote relationships ahead of the next disaster, through lectures, personnel exchanges, and participation in di- sasters drills (see, for example, Robert D. Eldridge, “Preparing for the “Big One”