New Britain herald. [microfilm reel] (New Britain, Conn.) 1890-1976, 1918-12-26

! ter OF honor with them. You know,
| in Japan, firemen are born. rather
! than made. A family is firemen for
! generations. The youngsters learn
the first lessons in boyhood. and then
, it becomes a Iife's work, as we'll as a
| passion for them"
Suddenly squads of soldiers arrived
from nearby barracks. While in the
United States dynamite is used to stop
the course of cont1agrations, in Japan
the method is more simple, but equal
ly effective, and nicely adapted to con-
ditions The little Japanese houses
are pulled down, the debris carried
away, and thus is a circular zone Gre
/ ated around the fire wherein is moth
| ing upon which it can feed.
The arriving soldiers were armed
with stout, long poles and they at once
! charged a line of dwellings previously
evacuated and emptied Of it's furnish
ings-and these pretty little places
crumbled swiftly like toy houses be
fore the adroit destroyers The fragile
fabric of lattice walls disintegrated
under powerful blows, sagged and fell.
/ carrying tiled roofs with them, and
/ were swiftly borne away. Thus was
! cheated Fudo, the Japanese god OF
| fire.
The crowd found time to stare in
polite curiosity at the foreigner. Il
hope you will notice. said the jap
anese, 'now orderly this crowd is.
Perhaps a little unpresentable jostling
now and then, but no trouble. I hope
| you feel perfectly safe; as safe as you
! would in New York or London or
| Paris.
The one real danger, after ALL"
rambled on the friend, lis from pick
| pockets or, rather, from petty bur
| glars. You soc, when the fire comes,
| the people rush out to see, and the
= burglar, taking advantage, runs in to
steal. Still, with the improvement of
the police system, this form of crime
/ is decreasing"
Il suppose this is a small blaze ?"
Small, indeed, though hard on the
! poor people whose homes have gone.
You know, in earlier days, in the
Shogunate days, the fires of Toxic
We're known as The Flowers of Edo
because they were so big and so beau
! tiful-40.000 houses; 10000 some
times
Edo is the ancient Shogunate name
of Toxic.
.LatterIy." my friend went on.
with the introduction of modern
western methods of f1re-dghting, we
! have done better both in prevention
and sujbduing. Our fire brigade has
been remodelled after the West, but,
Of course, 1T is still in very Juvenile
condition compared with the other
great capitals of the world. Toxic is
tration point of the industrial classes
of the empire, and the population is
expanding. moro especially In the OUT
skirts.
I'VE have six fire brigades in Toxic,
each brigade having two or three sub
stations. In addition to the regular
stations, special branch headquarters
are established in the thickly popu-
lated sections of the city from Novem-
Der to May. The total number of fire
men on duty day and night is 1000.
You may perhaps have noticed the tall
observatory structures which, like
miniature Eiffel towers, dominate the
city at frequent intervals of space.
They are the fire stations of Toxic
whose eternal watchers, peering in all
points of the compass, give the alarm
at the first sign of flames.
I'VE have 35 fire engines drawn by
horses and as many hosereels, but the
number will probably be increased
next year. The authorities have also
purchased a number of automobile
fire ladder trucks, their use being ne
cessitated by the gradual increase in
the erection of sky-scrapers in the
business center of Toxic.
ut must be evident to you that
while we continue to erect our build
ings in wood the scourge of fire is
always a possibility, but I think we
are doing very we'll and the fact that
there has been no great catastrophe
for many years is a proof, / fancy, that
our heroic fireladdies have not lost
their old Samurai spirit of victory
The fire was now under control and
even subsiding. And So joining the.
retreating procession of exquisite
swinging lanterns, the long lane Of
human f1re-fies, we went back to
America-land and to drcanland.