BUSINESSMEN FEEL FORTUNATE FAMILIES OK

Biokyowa President Satoru Akiyama and TG USA Executive Vice President Ishi Bashi received good news from Japan Tuesday morning following one of the country's most devastating earthquakes.

Akiyma was elated to hear by telephone that members of his family and two employees working in Japan escaped injury from a quake of 7.2 magnitude.

The earthquake has already killed more than 1,800 people.

Bashi's parents, sisters and his wife's parents live in Tokyo. Tokyo was not damaged by the quake.

"I've been watching the news, but it seems we're not getting much information right now," Bashi said.

Osaka, Japan's second-largest city, 20 miles across the bay from Kobe, also suffered heavy damage from the earthquake.

Akiyama said, "I was wakened by a telephone call early this morning from my daughter in Tokyo. Fortunately nothing happened to her or our employees who are in east-central Japan."

Akiyama was also anxious to learn of the status of his sister, who lives in Kobe, a port city that sustained the heaviest damage from the quake.

It was the most violent earthquake to strike a densely populated area of Japan since 1948, when a quake killed 5,000 people in the city of Fukui.

"Japan has had some bad quakes, but not in cities as big as this one," Akiyama, who has lived in Cape Girardeau for 1 1/2 years. "Maybe the construction of some of the newer buildings is not as good as some people thought."

Spring Romer, a graduate student who has a degree in geology and geophysics and works part-time at the Southeast Missouri State Earthquake Center, said construction of the buildings had little to do with the effects of the quake.

Kobe is a port city on the coast, Romer said. "When you build along coastal lines, you're going to have soft, loose ground that is saturated with water. Ideally you would want to build on bedrock, but when you build on the kind of surface Kobe has, the most skillful construction isn't going to help that much."

The employees work for Biokyowa's parent company of Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co. Ltd., which has six plants on the east and north of Kobe. Biokyowa has three employees from Japan who are working at its plant in Cape Girardeau.

The early morning quake collapsed roadways, sent trains off their tracks and demolished docks. Communication lines were severed in several areas.

"It's very difficult to get news out of any of the big cities right now," Akiyama said. "I've been trying to learn the latest from the fax that comes out of Tokyo, but it seems like everything I'm getting is old news."