Emma's Maw

The meteorologists who record the birth and upbringing of weather disturbances named her Emma, after Jane Austen's gentle heroine, the one who was so much in love with Mr. Knightley. At 4 one morning, Emma hit Okinawa with all the fury of a full-grown Pacific typhoon.

Tons of rain sweeping across the island at speeds of up to 156 m.p.h. breached sea walls, wrecked the Ryukyus Command building, reduced 3rd Marine Division headquarters to rubble and killed a military policeman. While Okinawa's 40,000 Americans shook inside their typhoon-proof but half-flooded houses, World War II Quonset huts were hurled into paddies and wrapped around telegraph poles. Thirty-five hours later, Okinawans found 7,000 homes and 80 public buildings totally destroyed, 27 fishing boats wrecked. Gone was 40% of the island's precious rice crop, 80% of the sweet-potato crop, and 60% of the sugar cane. Estimated damage to U.S. military installations: $10 million.

But not even then was Emma's anger expended. After a vicious sideswipe at Korea (where she killed eleven people and caused $280,000 damage), she headed into Japan's southern island of Kyushu. Here, blowing at speeds up to 115 m.p.h., she devastated hundreds of square miles, smashing some 2,000 houses and killing an estimated 30 Japanese. In her sultry wake fires sprang up, one of which half razed the city of Uozo (pop. 46,000).

That thirst for knowledge which causes man to seek what lies in the heart of hurricanes and harridans had sent a U.S. B50 typhoon reconnaissance plane flying up into the thickest of the weather with 16 men aboard. Somewhere in Emma's maw the B50 broke radio contact and was never heard or seen again. Emma whipped on, toward Soviet Sakhalin.

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