Page 108 - People & Places In Time

War & Remembrance
the same as I as a younger boy he had lived in Hong Kong while his father was stationed there . . . always good to know the right people when in a new place.
To this day I still have the lace tablecloth and napkins
I bought my mother from an open-air booth down an alley, off a busy Hong Kong street.
Anyway, as nice as Hong Kong was, the place I enjoyed the most was Japan. At some point during our tour the ship had damaged its propeller in shallow wa- ter, which necessitated going into dry dock in Sasabo, Japan.
Part of our friendship was our common inter- est in exploring away from the Navy part of any port; we wanted to find what Japan was about. In our travels about town we happened upon a small bar-restaurant, the Jun Bar. When I say small, it seated no more than ten or twelve at the bar and a few more at tables down the narrow space. It was a local’s place and we saw none but Japanese when there; we were always wel- comed.
Following a few visits, Mike had befriended the bar owner’s daughter, Akami, who worked there; she
in turn, introduced me to her cousin Masako. This lead to my only visit to a traditional Japanese home when we picked up our dates at Masako’s families’ house. It looked just the way a traditional Japanese home should as we removed our shoes to enter spare but elegant as only a Japanese home could be. This visit isn’t the source of my fascination with Japanese architecture and landscape, but it gave me a very real representation to remember.
Over time we went to several local restaurants about town, but our most memorable date was one Saturday morning. We rented a boat, rowing into a park called Kyjyukushima, the Ninety-nine Islands. I can’t say for sure if there were indeed ninety-nine islands. Some were quite large perhaps several acres of trees, rock
and sand, while others were little more than a tree or two clinging to a few large rocks rising from the water. The water was calm and so clear we seemed to float
on air above the sea floor. There were few other people around and we found a quiet beach of small, soft peb- bles and sand on one of the islands
the perfect place for a picnic, a magical setting. I’ll never forget that afternoon on the water with Masako, Akami and Mike as far away from the war and our homes in California as we could possibly be.
Today, my wife and I have a friend who was raised in Sasabo until coming to America for study and it’s here she has remained. Her name is Aki and when we spend time with her
I placed my camera with a red lens filter into the gun site of a 4omm cannon, then pointed the gun toward the setting sun, in Da Nang harbor.
Japan a welcome Break
Sasabo is a fare-sized coastal city on south-
ern Japans Kyushu Island. It has a large port with ship building facilities and that’s why we are there. Nagasaki is about sixty miles to the south while Tokyo lays six hundred miles north, and like much of Japan the coun- tryside is so beautiful. While the Seminole was in dry dock we had limited responsibility aboard ship. So, Mike and I were off with our cameras as much as possible
to explore the city and countryside. In the mornings, before beginning whatever our day had in store, I would stand at the ships railing watching as groups of twenty- five or thirty workers, men and women, lined up to do Ty-chi, before they went to work.
One of the many islands in Kjyukushima park.
she reminds me so much of those few weeks I had in her home town.
One of the more memorable trips we took while in Japan, was to Nagasaki and the Ground Zero Memorial Park. This was the place the second atomic bomb was dropped, the last time an atomic bomb has been used in war. A poignant reminder of the worst that mankind is capable. When I think back on this visit, it happened only twenty-three years after the entire city was leveled and tens of thousands of people killed, in the year I was born.
Almost done
The best of times always seem so brief. Leav- ing Japan, we headed north toward Korea R to pick up some Korean Marines. There for only a couple of days
we non-the-less had a troop truck ride inland to the Korean base and back to the ship. What I saw in that short trip was a countryside filled with rice pad- dies; nothing but an unending carpet of green as far as I could see.
This all happened so long ago more than fifty-five years so I often wonder what it all looks like today; Ja- pan, Korea, Vietnam, the current photo- graphs I see show that it all has changed beyond recognition. Unfortunately, near
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