1923 Great Kantō earthquake 40,000 who went missing and were presumed dead. According to the Japanese construction company Kajima Kobori Research's conclusive report of September 2004, 105,385 deaths were confirmed in the 1923 quake. The damage from this natural disaster was the greatest sustained by prewar Japan. In 1960, the government declared September 1, the anniversary of the quake, as an annual "Disaster Prevention Day". Because the earthquake struck at lunchtime when many people were cooking meals over fire, many people died as a result of the many large fires that broke out. Some fires developed into firestorms that swept across cities. Many people
1923 Great Kantō earthquake regional police and the Imperial Army used the pretext of civil unrest to liquidate political dissidents. Socialists such as (平澤計七), anarchists such as Sakae Ōsugi and Noe Itō, and the Chinese communal leader, (王希天), were abducted and killed by local police and Imperial Army, who claimed the radicals intended to use the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow the Japanese government. Director Chongkong Oh made two documentary films about the pogrom: "Hidden Scars: The Massacre of Koreans from the Arakawa River Bank to Shitamachi in Tokyo" (1983) and "The Disposed-of Koreans: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Camp Narashino" (1986). They