Quotes of the Day

Seventy-six-year-old Tatsukichi Yamada, his wife, son and grandson are living in a tent city outside the high school in Tokamachi, a small tourist town in Japan's northwest Niigata prefecture. They're all wearing five layers of clothing to keep warm and have no idea when it might be safe to return to their home. "They say there might be another big one within a week," says Yamada. "I can't go home. I want to take a bath."

The Yamadas were among more than 100,000 people made temporarily homeless last week in the aftermath of Japan's worst earthquake in nearly a decade—which was followed, four days later, by an almost equally strong aftershock. The back-to-back temblors left 36 dead and 2,400 wounded—and that's after a summer of havoc caused by 10 typhoons, including last month's Tokage, the roughest in 25 years. Seventeen-year-old Ryutaro Isobe was forced to live in an elementary-school gym in nearby Horinouchi, while his mother and two younger brothers camped out in the family car. He said the stress from the quakes was starting to take its toll on people, especially adults. "The older people are fighting a lot more now."

Throughout the week, Japanese television networks showed dramatic footage of the devastation. In one of the most riveting—and miraculous—moments, rescuers found a car containing a mother and two of her children entombed under a pile of rubble. After being buried for four days, the 39-year-old mother and three-year-old daughter were dead, but the two-year-old son, Yuta Minagawa, emerged, dehydrated and hypothermic, but alive.

The relief distribution center at Tokamachi was feeding about 12,000 people nearly a week after the first quake. It had sufficient rice and water, but other centers ran short of food, clothing and medicine, and officials admitted that temporary housing units for people whose houses were destroyed were still weeks away from being completed. Such snafus raised concerns about whether Japan had learned any lessons following the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, when more than 6,000 people died, highways were toppled, and bureaucratic delays kept soldiers, supplies and rescue dogs from reaching the region. As the week wore on, Tokyo's residents turned edgy, openly wondering if the Big One was imminent. And as they watched TV scenes and read newspaper accounts of the havoc wrought upon the relatively unpopulated Niigata, they questioned whether their city was, or ever could be, truly prepared.

• Jim Frederick | Tokyo
• After a season of typhoons, a deadly earthquake strikes Japan