Japan, as a line drawing entitled “Emerging” published in the St Louis Star and Times suggested, would rise again. “Her catastrophe,” the Baltimore Sun proclaimed with no sense of shame, “is our opportunity” ( Baltimore Sun 1923). Hill, Financial Editor of the Iron Trade Review informed the Buffalo Commercial broadsheet that Japanese demand for reconstruction materials would be “incalculable” ( Buffalo Commercial 1923). Japanese steel mills, they added, could only provide roughly fifty percent of Japan’s ordinary steel requirements and reconstructing Tokyo and Yokohama would be anything but a normal situation. “Japan,” the Wall Street Journal suggested just four days after the calamity, “will need a large tonnage of steel for rebuilding and the lion’s share of this tonnage should come to mills here” ( Wall Street Journal 1923b). Japan would be rebuilt and America could provide all of the material resources necessary for this herculean task. Japan had been “stricken” the New York World informed its readers, and its survivors were stalked by the ominous spectre of death.įigure 1: Japan under the spectre of death ( New York World 1923, 4).Īt the same time, a sense of opportunity permeated the region, if not all of America. “Tokyo,” its pages informed readers, was “one vast city of misery” ( Cleveland Plain Dealer 1923). Earthquakes, fires, and tsunami, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, had left behind nothing but desolation. Beyond accepting that Japan’s earthquake had led to unprecedented deaths, others came to believe that large swaths of urban Japan had been annihilated. “500,000 May be the Toll of Jap Cataclysm,” projected a bold headline in the Hammond Times of Northwest Indiana ( Hammond Lake Country Times 1923). 250,000 had perished in Tokyo and Yokohama alone, the Buffalo Enquirer and Detroit Free Press reported, with many more deaths likely in cities across Japan’s main island ( Buffalo Enquirer 1923 Detroit Free Press 1923). ![]() ![]() On one hand, residents from Gary, Indiana, to Buffalo, New York, gasped in horror as news of Japan’s earthquake tragedy unfolded. Mixed emotions ran through America’s industrial heartland in September 1923. Keywords: American humanitarianism abroad, post-disaster corporate giving, Japanese-American relations, American Red Cross, 1920s globalism Why? What did corporate givers hope to accomplish or achieve? Recognition of Japan as an important commercial partner and expectations of expanded trade, my findings suggest, significantly influenced donations from key corporate actors. Large corporate donations comprised a significant part of America’s “tsunami of aid” to Japan in 1923. Abstract: Why do we give to distant sufferers in need? Are we motivated primarily by altruism or opportunism? What, if anything, do givers expect in return for significant acts of generosity? This article explores these questions through an examination of corporate giving to Japan from America’s industrial heartland following the Great Kantō Earthquake.
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