Rare Footage of Ground Self-Defense Force After 1995 Hanshin Earthquake Shows Reality of Situation; Video Discovered in 2023 at SDF Hyogo Office

The Yomiuri Shimbun

2:00 JST, January 27, 2025

KOBE – Rare video footage showing the Ground Self-Defense Force engaging in disaster relief operations at the time of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake is being used to convey the reality of the disaster.

The 20-minute video, which was found in 2023 in a storage area of the Self Defense Force Hyogo Provincial Cooperation Office in Kobe’s Chuo Ward, shows personnel searching through rubble and providing water to victims. It is rare for the SDF to have video from that time.

In the video, a GSDF member wearing a helmet talks about how his team was searching for people buried alive in the rubble. “I wanted to help as quickly as possible, but I had to take my time and dig someone out with my hands,” he said. “It took us about an hour and a half. I’m relieved to have found people alive.”

In footage showing GSDF members providing food and baths to survivors, smiling children are seen enjoying curry and rice prepared by rescuers. A woman who used a makeshift bath set up in a tent expressed gratitude, saying: “My body warmed up. It was nice to be able to wash my head.”

Some of the footage found could only have been filmed by GSDF personnel as it shows the departure of trucks leaving the garrison as well as meetings of senior officers.

According to the Defense Ministry, the GSDF began assessing the damage about an hour after the earthquake occurred. Four hours later, at the request of Hyogo Prefecture, personnel were dispatched to Kobe and elsewhere. A total of about 2.25 million people were involved in activities before their dispatch concluded on April 27.

The video was found in the summer of 2023 by an official at the Hyogo office who was cleaning a storage room. The location of the filming and how it was edited remains unknown, but it is thought to have been recorded with a video camera then edited for the purpose of training personnel.

The Hyogo office is pushing for the use of the footage for disaster prevention awareness at junior and senior high schools, calling the video “valuable footage that provides an insight into actual conditions of the disaster area and the reality of the activities that took place.”

On Friday, which marked 30 years since the earthquake struck, the video was shown at an event in Chuo Ward that calls for a safe and secure Hyogo Prefecture.

“It is a miracle that video footage of our activities are preserved from an era when we mainly kept records on paper or in photographs,” the Hyogo office’s head Hideki Fukumori said. “Disasters can happen at any time, so we want the public to be more aware of disaster prevention by learning about the situation at that time.”

DVDs with the video can be rented by schools, municipalities and public facilities on request.