Yesterday, at exactly 12:46 p.m., 60 people gathered beneath a cherry tree at Seattle Center to mark the 10th anniversary — to the minute — of the 7.3-magnitude earthquake in Kobe, Japan, that killed 6,433 people.

"It's amazing to think it was 10 years ago that we woke up to the earth growling and shaking, with destruction and fires and the never-ending sound of sirens," said Karin Zaugg, president of the Seattle-Kobe Sister City Association and a survivor of the Kobe quake.

Kobe and Seattle have been sister cities for 48 years. Seattle now has 20 other sister cities around the world, but Kobe was its first. Both Seattle and Kobe are port cities framed by mountains, and they share similar weather.

The cities also have Ichiro in common: The Mariners star played for the Kobe-based Orix Blue Wave for nine years before coming to Seattle.

At the moment of the anniversary, the crowd lit candles and bowed heads for a minute of silence. Then, led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, each person lined up to ring the bronze 600-pound Kobe Bell, a 1962 World's Fair gift from Kobe to Seattle.

CITY OF KOBE At a memorial in Kobe, Japan, 6,433 traditional bamboo candleholders, one for each person who died in the earthquake on Jan. 17, 1995, were arranged to form a giant "1-17." Seattle contributed 16 candleholders, bearing signatures and messages from 255 Seattle-area residents.

Shortly after the Kobe quake in 1995, nearly 3,000 people came to ring the bell in memory of the dead. The bell rang once for each life lost, and the service lasted for four days.

The huge bell's ringer, a log suspended horizontally by thick ropes, comes out only on special occasions, said Charles O'Briant, a burly 6-foot-2 Seattle Center carpenter who takes care of it. The bell's deep tone carries easily up Queen Anne Hill.

In Seattle, the quake's anniversary ceremony was understated. But in Kobe it was a national event: Thousands of people, including Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, gathered in the predawn rain to remember a national horror.

Nickels has visited Kobe twice, both before and after the earthquake. He said that the earthquake helped to strengthen the sister-city bond. The two cities now share disaster-preparedness information regularly.

After the Nisqually earthquake in 2001, Zaugg said, a fax offering help came from Kobe City Hall almost immediately.

ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Mayor Greg Nickels signs one of the candleholders sent to Kobe.

Two members of Seattle's Emergency Management staff attended the earthquake memorial in Kobe this year. They also will participate in a United Nations conference on earthquake preparedness in Kobe this week.

In January 1995, Zaugg, a 1988 graduate of Seattle's Garfield High, was living on the outskirts of Kobe and working as a translator for the city. Shortly after the quake, she hiked into the city to see how she could help.

Because she is fluent in both Japanese and German, Zaugg became a translator for a Swiss rescue team that used dogs to sniff through the rubble for signs of life. For a week, she guided the team around the ruined city.

The team found dozens of people buried in the wreckage — but only one was still alive. Many, Zaugg said, had been crushed in their beds by the traditional heavy wooden "tansu," or wardrobe, that stands in nearly every Japanese bedroom.

Maiko Fujimoto, 29, a native of Kobe, stood in the crowd with a candle at yesterday's memorial. When the big quake hit, she was a first-year university student in Kobe. Now she works for the Japanese government's Disaster Reduction Institute in Kobe.

She's here studying for a master's degree in public administration at The Evergreen State College.

Fujimoto works on improving emergency-communications systems in Kobe, both within neighborhoods and across the city.

"It's important to remember the lives lost and to prepare for the next earthquake all the time," she said.

Jim Downing: 206-515-5627 or jdowning@seattletimes.com