A BOOK REVIEW: THE ORPHAN TSUNAMI OF 1700 By: Brian F. Atwater, Musumi-Rokkaku Satoko, Satake Kenji, Tsuji Yoshinobu, Ueda Kazue and David K. Yamaguchi , ISBN 0-295-98535-6, U.S. Geological Survery, UW Press (2005)

“The Orphan Tsunami” is a great book with very useful information in assessing the tsunami risk of the Pacific Northwest, but does not provide all the answers. The authors do a magnificent job of documenting the historical information of the tsunami in Japan and in outlining potential tsunami risks of the Pacific Northwest from major earthquakes that can indeed occur along the Cascadia Subduction zone – although potential magnitudes may have been overstated. The major conclusion linking the “orphan” tsunami in Japan to a Cascade megathrust, magnitude 9 earthquake is based primarily on conjecture and peripheral circumstantial evidence. Thus, the title “The Orphan Tsunami” was properly chosen for the book, which, in spite of its wealth of data, elaborate detective work, and seemingly persuasive arguments – still leaves us with the uncertainty of what really was the parent event that resulted in the destructive tsunami of 1700 in Japan. What is presented in the book is a possible scenario but not necessarily what actually happened. However, this should not detract from the value of the book as an outstanding work of scholarship and documentation, even in the absence of adequate historical or geological data to work with and sufficiently link the two disaster events.