TOKYO -- White plumes of smoke rising from its crater and widening cracks on its slopes were the latest indications Thursday that a rumbling volcano on a northern Japanese island was about to erupt.

A military helicopter spotted cracks up to 100 meters (330 feet) along the sides of the 732-meter (2,402-foot) Mount Usu, on Hokkaido island, during its patrol, the Meteorological Agency said in an emergency bulletin.

"It is highly likely an eruption could occur in the next few days," the Coordinating Committee for Prediction of Volcanic Eruption said in an emergency bulletin.

Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 people from three towns near the volcano -- Date, Sobetsu and Abuta -- kept a nervous vigil in evacuation shelters, as experts warned that the volcano's eruption was imminent. It would be Mount Usu's first blast in more than 20 years.

Full Story: http://CNN.com/2000/ASIANOW/east/03/30/japan.volcano.03/index.html