Beginning late at night on September 17 and continuing through the next day, the huge Makurazaki Typhoon raged over the scorched plain. On a par with the Muroto (1934) and Ise-wan (1959) typhoons, the Makurazaki was one of the three most devastating typhoons of the Showa era (1926 - 1989). Assaulting Japan with a low barometric pressure of 963.93hp and heavy rains, it left some 2,000 dead. Some were killed by landslides, many simply disappeared. Water flooded central Nobori-cho to a depth of over 50 cm, and the entire city suffered water damage.

Bridges that had remained standing after the atomic bombing were washed away. Railroad tracks and roads under reconstruction, surviving company buildings whose employees had only recently come back to work, all were drenched---efforts to rebuild lives were washed away. Water drove people out of the tiny air-raid shelters and barracks where they were sleeping and carried off the few possessions they had left. Some residents who had come back from their places of evacuation and refuge finally gave up on the burnt plain and returned to the countryside. It was a year before people returned in significant numbers to live in the A-bomb desert.