OCR Text |
Show lost their lives In Mihara'n crater despite every effort to put a stop to tlic suicide cnr'.e. The cruler is seven miles around and It Is not humanly posMe to net-In this vast territory as have been oilier sulchle-lrysflng places. SEE SPIRITS OF CRATER VICTIMS Ghostly Visitors Bring Fear to Japanese. Curling tip In the smoke which rises from the crater of Mihara, Japan's famous suicide volcano, the ghostly Images of three girls were seen by terror-stricken villagers on the Island of Oshima. Remembering that Mihara rose to fame as a lovers' lov-ers' death tryst following suicides of three high school girls, the villagers said the specter of the girls was an 111 omen. Frightened, the superstitious said the volcano's "nusln' (master) was about to "rise from the land of fire" to lure visitors to "jigoku" (the abode of the devil). Three days later visitors from Tokyo, just across the bay, swarmed to the island, partly out of curiosity and partly because It was Sunday and the Island's natural beauty and warmth attracted them. At 10:30 a. m. about 100 spectators were gathered on the spot from which persons committing suicide plunge to their death. Suddenly a young man, scarcely twerity-five, ran forward and flung himself headlong Into the crater. As the spectators, horrified and speechless, looked at each other, another man, a few years older, came out from the throng and, without saying a word, walked as though In a trance and dropped Into the fiery pit Nervously the spectators moved away, afraid that some nnseen hand might pull them into the smoldering Inferno. Suddenly another youth, about twenty-three, ran to the edge of the crater, stripped himself of his kimono and, with nothing on except ex-cept shorts, stepped over the brink into the world beyond. Hardly had the talk of these suicides sui-cides died down when, two days later, three more men flung themselves them-selves Into the fire-emlttlng abyss, one after another, as many spectators specta-tors looked on. The police have decided that hereafter here-after all visitors to the Island will be questioned before being permitted to land. Those suspected of suicide Intentions In-tentions will be barred from landing. All visitors must buy round-trip fares. Officials of the home office In Tokyo are frankly pessimistic. Last year more than 800 persons |