were destroyed, and another 22,965 were flooded. Throughout Japan, Mireille killed 66 people and injured another 2,862 people, including ten deaths on a capsized freighter. Elsewhere, the typhoon killed two people in South Korea, and its remnants brought strong winds to Alaska. Meteorological history The origins of Mireille were from a poorly-organized area of convection, or thunderstorms, associated with the monsoon trough near the Marshall Islands on September 13. That day, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) began tracking the system as a tropical depression. The system moved westward, developing a large increase in thunderstorms over the center on September 15. That day, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued a tropical cyclone formation alert, and issued their first advisory on Tropical Depression 21W at 00:00 UTC, estimating 1-minute sustained winds of 55 km/h (35 mph). About six hours later, the agency upgraded the depression to Tropical Storm Mireille, after satellite imagery indicated the storm was very compact and intensifying quickly. The JTWC later determined in a post-storm analysis that Mireille had attained tropical storm status 12 hours earlier on the previous day. Also at the time of it attaining tropical storm status, Mireille was one of three storms in the basin, along with Tropical Storm Luke to the northwest and Typhoon Nat to the west in the South China Sea. Only 12 hours after the JTWC issued the first warning, Mireille attained typhoon status at 12:00 UTC on September 16, and several hours later reached an initial peak intensity of 135 km/h (85 mph). The small storm moved west-northwestward due to the influence of the subtropical ridge to the north. On September 17, the track shifted to the west-southwest, threatening Guam. The small typhoon turned more to the west, passing about 20 km (12 mi) north of Saipan on September 19, part of the Northern Marianas Islands north of Guam. For several days, Mireille failed to intensify due to wind shear from the larger Tropical Storm Luke to the north. After Luke weakened and progressed northward, Mireille was able to strengthen more gradually, as well as increase in size. On September 22, the typhoon strengthened into a super typhoon, which is an unofficial category used by the JTWC for storms reaching 1‑minute winds of at least 240 km/h (150 mph), equivalent to a strong Category 4 hurricane on the SSHWS. According to the JMA, Mireille attained 10‑minute winds of 185