TOKYO — An Air Force wife from Okinawa, alive after jumping six floors Monday from the blazing New Japan Hotel, has told a harrowing story of survival to a thankful husband.
Capt. James Poff of the 17th Combat Support Group at Kadena AB said his wife, Sharon, 37, has been in Nihon University Hospital with multiple injuries.
Doctors say she is out of danger.
The fire she survived was the worst in Tokyo since World War II. It took 32 lives in the 22-year-old hotel.
Poff said his wife, who has been denied all visitors except close relatives, has given him only a "very sketchy" account of the fire, which broke out near her room on the 9th floor and raged out of control for 8 hours.
"She woke up in the early hours of the morning maybe between 2:30 and 3 o'clock," Poff told Pacific Stars and Stripes. "She heard some noise in the.hallway. A bunch of people were running back and forth and talking. She discovered the blaze then."
Poff said she jumped to escape the flames, landing on the third-floor roof above the hotel's main lobby.
"That's where, I guess, the fire department and the rest of the people picked her up and then put her on a stretcher and took her to the hospital," he related.
He paused, and added:
"Apparently, a couple of other people on the Same floor jumped, and they were killed. She was quite lucky, quite fortunate."
Poff said his wife, whom he said was likely to be transferred to the U.S. Naval Regional Medical Center at Yokosuka Friday, faces surgery to repair a pelvis fractured in five places. Her left arm and ankle also were injured in the jump, Poff said.
Mrs. Poff, who works in the administrative section of the support group, was in Tokyo for training on a word processor. Her husband was in Kadena at the time.
