Vera came ashore on the Kii Peninsula on the evening of 26 September 1959 and drove the sea up into Ise Bay overnight. Much of that shoreline is reclaimed land, and a good part of southern Nagoya sits below the high tide line, held back by embankments. When the embankments gave way the water came in and then had nowhere to go. Some districts stood flooded for weeks.
About five thousand people died, most of them in the surge itself. The deaths from disease that usually follow standing water on that scale stayed lower than they might have been. Wells were closed and clean water trucked in, people were moved out of the flooded wards and inoculated against typhoid and dysentery, the water itself was treated. That was health officers and volunteers working in mud for a long time after the storm had passed.
The port and the rail lines into Nagoya were out for weeks, so the first relief came by boat — small craft working over flooded ground that had been streets. Crews spent days just getting people off roofs and embankments before anything else could move.
At the shelters they cooked rice in communal pots and carried it out by boat to families still up on their roofs, waiting. Warm food in your hands while the water's still there counts for a great deal.