Japan Marks 30 Years since Kobe Quake

Kobe, Jan. 17 (Jiji Press)--As Friday marked the 30th anniversary of a devastating earthquake that rocked Kobe and other western Japan areas, bereaved families prayed for victims and renewed their resolve to pass on lessons from the disaster to the next generation.

Memories of the Jan. 17, 1995, quake, which took the lives of 6,434 people and injured 43,792, are fading. But disasters keep occurring, such as a large quake that struck the Noto Peninsula in central Japan at the start of last year.

At Kobe East Park in Chuo Ward of Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture's capital, civic organizations and others hosted a memorial event in which they lit bamboo and paper lanterns arranged to form the phrase "yorisou 1.17" and observed a moment of silence at 5:46 a.m., when the 7.3-magnitude quake struck. Yorisou can mean "come close together."

About 55,000 people visited the site by 5 p.m. Many pledged not to forget quake-affected areas and people, determined to continue supporting them.

In the afternoon, the event had moments of silence at the times of day when the March 2011 massive quake occurred off northeastern Japan, triggering huge tsunami, and the Noto Peninsula temblor struck in January last year.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]