For more than wandered thr parts of Toki remaining for intervals of ying length at different places the city. I saw of these so-called Vig ance Committee. In most cases they were mobs pure and simple, Tut lacking even the devil-may-care spirit of the usual mob. In fact. they seemed possessed more of fear that treacherous Koreans and Japanese Socialists would pounce on them and make short work of them. Tt was a case of "Kill or be killed," and this accounts for the brutal and feroctous manner in which these Vigilance Committees attacked unarmed people and massacred them mercilessly.
On the very first day of the quake, September 1, while I was at the Imperial Hotel I heard the news going round that the Koreans Were behaving bestially—that they were massacring men, women and. children; were throwing bombs and oil-soaked torches into buildings the fire had not yet reached that they were outraging Japanese long enough to Know thab tales of women.
Having lived in Japan
Korean atrocities have to be taken ith a pinch of salt, T refused to give credence to the reports and asked a Japanese friend of mine whether the Japanese had thus suddenly lost all their courage and manliness to permit a few thousand Koreans to reduce a city in which millions of Japanese were living to ashes, while the latter merely looked on. The answer was: "You do not know these Koreans yet."
By evening of the same day, no Korean's life, unless he was in a military barracks or in a police station where the guardians of the law were numerically strong -enough to n repulse mobs of the Vigilance Committees, was worth a cent.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.