Photograph: Rescue operation continues at a train crash site near the National Railways Tsurumi Station on November 9, 1963 in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
Hundreds of people were killed in two separate and unrelated disasters in Japan. At 3:20 p.m. local time in the city of Omuta, a powerful explosion (believed to have been caused by a spark igniting a cloud of coal dust) ripped through the large Mitsui Mikawa coal mine, where more than 1,300 people were underground because of the afternoon shift change, twice as many as would have been present most of the time. The final death toll was 458 coal miners. Those who had not died in the blast were poisoned by carbon monoxide, and hundreds of survivors were hospitalized. Even two years after the disaster, the Asahi Evening News would report in late 1965, 286 people were still in the hospital, and 20 of them remained comatose. Under the Japanese workers’ compensation law at the time, however, “compensatory aid lessens if the victim is not cured within three years”.
Less than seven hours later and 600 miles to the east, a triple railroad disaster at Tsurumi began shortly before 10:00 p.m. near Yokohama. The driver of a large dump truck had tried to cross a set of six tracks near the Tsurumi Station, in front of a slow-moving freight train, which was derailed in the collision. Three of the freight cars were scattered over the eastbound tracks used by the high-speed Yokosuka Line. In the next 30 seconds, a passenger train bound for Tokyo crashed into the freight cars, and was scattered over the Yokosuka Line’s westbound tracks, where a third train collided with the first two on its way from the Tokyo-suburb of Kawasaki. The final death toll was 161 people.
The United States announces resumption of its commodity-import aid to South Vietnam, suspended in August.
Two hundred armed rebels of the formerly outlawed Social Democratic Party have rallied to the new revolutionary government with all their weapons, the government announced today. Recruitment of these fighting men, who have been campaigning against U.S.-supported government troops near the Cambodian frontier, raised a question as to how many guerrilla outfits labeled Communist Viet Cong by Ngô Đình Diệm’s administration may have been made up of non-Communist opponents of his regime.
The government of Premier Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ hopes to win over all of the non-Communist opposition parties, factions and guerrillas and create a truly united front against the Viet Cong for the first time in South Vietnam’s history. Buddhist leaders called today for support of the new regime by the nation’s Buddhist millions. A once-powerful religious sect that Diệm crushed, the Cao Dai, was reported planning to give its backing and reorganize a private army of 2,000 to 3,000 men.
Another American serviceman was killed yesterday in the sporadic warfare the Communists have intensified since Diệm was overthrown last weekend. S/1C William J. Everhart of Canton, Kansas perished under machine-gun fire that raked a patrol of armed mountain tribesmen he was accompanying on the Darlac Plateau, 170 miles northeast of Saigon. Everhart was the 75th American to die in combat in South Vietnam.
The host of Madame Ngô Đình Nhu said today he did not know if she had read newspaper stories or heard broadcast accounts of stories of death and torture suffered by political prisoners of the former regime in South Vietnam. That government was headed by her brother-in-law, President Ngô Đình Diệm, and her husband, the secret police chief, who were slain in last weekend’s coup. “If she has, she probably wouldn’t comment on them anyway,” said Allen Chase. Madame Nhu and her daughter, Lệ Thủy, 18, have been in seclusion in the Chase’s Bel Air mansion since Wednesday. Madame Nhu is awaiting the arrival here next week of her three younger children, who were flown safely from Vietnam to Rome, where their uncle, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục, took charge of them. In the last few days, she has conferred with only a few close associates.
Twenty thousand guests today celebrated the marriage of Prime Minister Milton Obote to a former secretary at Uganda’s United Nations mission in New York. Obote, 37, was married to Miria Kalule by the archbishop of Uganda, Dr. Leslie Brown, in crowded Namirembe cathedral. They planned to leave Entebbe by air tonight for London and a European honeymoon.
U.S. Vice President Johnson ended a tour of Europe’s small nations, which he called highly successful despite being chided by newspapers for handing out pens, lighters.
Cuban Premier Fidel Castro is sometimes right when he announces the capture or execution of CIA operatives on spy missions.
Soviet scientists are probably seeking a breakthrough to the “anti-matter” super-bomb, a U.S. study said.
President Keith Funston of the New York Stock Exchange said his latest meeting with Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev convinced him that the U.S. should not sell wheat or any other goods to the Soviet Union.
An Eastern Air Lines DC-8 jetliner, bound from New York to Mexico City, made an emergency landing at Barksdale Air Force Base today after an engine ripped away. Six passengers were injured in the sudden drop caused by loss of the engine. The plane, Eastern Flight 310, carried 117 passengers and a crew of 7. The six injured were hospitalized. The engine housing and part of the wing were torn away when the engine dropped off, the pilot told the air force. The plane plunged several thousand feet when it made a turn as it entered a downdraft near Corpus Christi, Texas, a spokesman said. “Most of us did not have our seat belts fastened,” a passenger said. He said the sudden drop threw passengers about. The injured, four of them women, were taken to the Barksdale hospital. Two were on stretchers and the others walked to an ambulance. The most seriously hurt was Dorothy Griffith of Springfield, Pennsylvania, who suffered a broken back.
Former Vice President Nixon is contacting Republicans in all sections of the nation, urging them to withhold 1964 Presidential nomination commitments.
Democrat J. J. Pickle, political friend of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Republican Jim Dobbs captured the two top spots for a U.S. House seat and will meet in a runoff.
Southern Republicans laid plans to wrest 22 Southern House seats from the Democrats and vowed solidarity, even if Senator Barry Goldwater doesn’t head the 1964 GOP ticket, at their huddle in Charleston.
Governor Nelson Rockefeller will shed his usual elaborate campaign operation for a “folksy” approach in his grass-roots appeal to New Hampshire voters.
Three Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee attacked the Peace Corps as a burgeoning bureaucracy long on public relations but short on accomplishments.
The five precision bandits who stole up to $3 million in jewels and gold bars from a New York delivery truck left their fingerprints behind, police said.
A man accused of posing as a psychiatrist at a Massachusetts mental hospital was committed for mental observation. He also was accused of bigamy after marrying a nurse
President John F. Kennedy went to his home called Wexford in Atoka, Virginia. He arrived there in the afternoon, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Ben Bradlee, and photographer Cecil Stoughton. Author Thurston Clarke, in his recent book entitled JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, writes at page 286:
Jackie had organized an informal horse show to entertain them, but the hill leading to the house was so steep and the road so rutted from days of rain that none of her friends' horse vans could make it, leaving her and Caroline as the only performers. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and cool. He and the Bradlees sat on the stone wall of the patio, drinking Bloody Marys and watching Jackie jump hurdles in the meadow below. Later they sat against the wall of the house, sheltered from the wind, their faces tipped toward the weak November sun. Jackie led John's pony, Leprechaun, up from the meadow and handed her husband some sugar cubes to feed him. When the pony nudged him onto his side looking for more sugar, he threw an arm over his head. As Jackie and the Bradlees collapsed in hysterics, he shouted at Stoughton, "Are you getting this Captain? You're about to see a president trampled by a horse."
Stoughton also filmed him teaching Caroline how to swing a golf club, and John marching across the lawn, wearing an oversized helmet and carrying a toy rifle on his shoulder. He stopped to salute his mother with his left hand. She knelt down in her riding boots and jodhpurs to show him how to do it correctly, using his right. Tomorrow Daddy would be taking him to a ceremony (Veterans Day) where he would see real soldiers, she explained. They would be saluting Daddy, so perhaps he would want to salute him too. Kennedy was concerned about John's fascination with guns and the military, but reluctantly indulged it, buying him toy guns, letting him attend military ceremonies, and telling General Clifton, "I guess we all go through that. He just sees more of the real thing."
“Tovarich” closes at Broadway Theater NYC after 264 performances.
AFL Football:
The Buffalo Bills, led by Jack Kemp’s three touchdown passes and his 14-yard scoring run, created a virtual three-way tie for the American Football League’s Eastern Division lead tonight with a 27-17 victory over the Denver Broncos. The triumph before 30,989, Buffalo’s third straight and fifth in six games, gave the Bills a 5-4-1 record. Boston and Houston, with 5-4 marks, play tomorrow. It was the first time in Buffalo’s four-year history that the Bills climbed so high in the standings, and the victory was the first ever at home over Denver in four years. Kemp pitched a 21-yard payoff pass to Charlie Ferguson at 5:54 of the second period and one of 58 yards to Ed Rutkowski and the third of 7 yards to Cookie Gilchrist in the third quarter. He ran 14 yards around right end with 2:41 left in the game for the fourth score.
Denver alternated two rookie quarterbacks, Don Breaux and Mickey Slaughter, with little success until the final period. Slaughter finally combined with Bill Groman on a 74-yard pass play with 5:10 remaining and then connected with Lionel Taylor on a 5-yard, scoring pass with 29 seconds left. The Broncos (2-6-1) suffered their second straight defeat at the hands of the Bills, who won at Denver, 30-28, last weekend. Gene Mingo, who missed field goal tries of 50 and 47 yards in the first half, booted a 46-yarder three seconds before intermission to cut Buffalo’s lead to 6-3. Mingo made good on two extra points giving him 47 straight over a two-year span.
Denver Broncos 17, Buffalo Bills 27
Born:
Anthony Bowie, NBA shooting guard (San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic, New York Knicks), in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Ron Hadley, NFL linebacker (San Francisco 49ers), in Caldwell, Idaho.
Dan Rice, NFL running back (Cincinnati Bengals), in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ken Sims, NFL defensive back (St. Louis Cardinals), in East St. Louis, Illinois.
History Diaries 