Society
An Unverified Sighting and a Rescue: Foreigners in Japan's Kumamoto Earthquake Threads
Two opposite stories about foreigners in the Kumamoto earthquake zone circulated on the same day. One was a single social media post claiming three suspicious foreigners had been seen in Yatsushiro, which could not be matched to any reported theft, suspect or police statement. The other was a report that five Vietnamese workers had pulled an elderly woman from a collapsed house with their bare hands. Threads carried calls for patrols and checkpoints, warnings against repeating the rumours of 1923, and readers who praised the rescue while saying it changed nothing about their view of foreign residents.