Typhoon Ione was a catastrophic and deadly tropical cyclone that left over 512 confirmed deaths and another 326 to be missing as it affected Japan, with the majority of the fatalities coming from the city of Ichinoseki in Iwate Prefecture. It also left a significant trail of damage on the country, just after Typhoon Kathleen devastated the area. The fourteenth named storm and the ninth typhoon of the 1948 Pacific typhoon season, Ione was first seen in weather maps as a tropical storm near the Mariana Islands on September 11. It moved to the northwest, passing through the island country, before strengthening to a typhoon on September 13. It rapidly organized to a Category 4 typhoon and reached its peak intensity on the next day before slowly weakening as it started to approach the Japanese