Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

I have read that the shrine was built to honor those lost in WW II, then expanded to include all war dead from the Meiji Era forward.
When was the shirne built and exactly when were the 20 or so "war criminals" added ?

Hey Eric;

You might check the Wikkipedia article on this.

It is very comprehensive. Good luck.

Peter, I watched and enjoyed the you-tube movie, Battle of the Pacific, to which you posted a link, and I should have thanked you long ago. My family lived on Saipan right after the war (1946-48) when Japanese soldiers were still living in the caves. My father was a Naval officer and had to carry a pistol, although he never had to use it. On weekends our family entertainment was to go boondocking in the jungle, foraging for wild-growing bananas, mangoes, avocados, and breadfruit ~ our only fresh produce aside from what we could grow in our garden. Sometimes we found C-rations and unlabeled cans of food stored in abandoned Quonset huts. Periodically freezer ships visited the island, providing meat and dry goods, and our water came from a large rain barrel next to our Quonset hut home. It was quite and adventure. To my great surprise, during the fifties, when I was a college student in Pennsylvania, the school newspaper ran an article about a Japanese soldier, considered to be the last to come out of the Saipan caves more than a dozen years after World War II ended. Regarding this most recent newspaper article, we are indeed watching the last remnants of World War II pass into history.

Nice to hear from you again.
Thank you Im glad you enjoyed the movie.
Your experiences on Saipan are very remarkable. I am surprised that they allowed family under the "primitive" circumstances.
And I learned a new word "boondocking" !

Drinking out of a rain barrel. Theres one for ya..


If my memory serves me its "Dr" right ?

Funny how some small thing, a taste, a sight a smell, sticks in your memory when larger events are forgotten.

Here is one:

It was around Christmas 1968, and it was cold for Japan. For some reason we went to Tokyo to see the sights, it was a quick train ride.

Naturally we went to the Ginza, and toured the Sony Buildling to see all of the new gagets like transistor radios and the like.
We were just wandering and came upon a street vendor, I loved the street vendors as they were cheap [like me] and had exotic things that we had never seen. So this one had a steaming bed of hot coals that smelled wonderful. The sign was in Japanese and naturally I couldn't read it. I got closer and the man asked us if we wanted any. I told him that we didn't know what it was that he had so he took a large straining spoon and
dipped into the bed of very fine, very hot black sand. He came out with a small [about 1"] looking nut of some kind and gave me one as a sample.
After showing me the trick to cracking the nut I split it with my wife and we both ate a half. It was wonderful, hot nutty and very very tasty. He was delighted that we liked it and even without us telling him he started to dip back into the vat to get us a full order, which he put into a neatly folded
piece of brown paper. We had several right there as we tried to talk to him. I asked him what the nuts were called and he told us in Japanese but unfortunately it wasn't included in our trusty little red dictionary, which we carried everywhere. So we thanked him, paid him, I forget something like Y 150
and started on our way back to the Ginza about a block away as we opened these luscious little nuts and marveled how delectable they were and what they might be.

I got under a streetlight to look at one closely. "You know" I said, " If I didn't know any better I think they are chestnuts" !

"I think your right" she said, there chestnuts, just like back home.

We ate another and stared up at the Christmas lights on the Ginza and started singing..

" Chestnuts roasting on a open fire"....

How strange, we had never had these at home althow they were everywhere, and our forefathers roasted them all the time..and we
had to come ten thousand miles, standing in the middle of Tokyo on a winters night to
experience what we should have been very used to. One of those lifes little ironys.

Wonders do never cease.


Next up;

As hinted at earlier; A foreigners faux pas.
Tresspassing in the Buddhist temple.
or..yea we messed up....

for the future...The big art theft entitled...[ I think the statue of limitations has run out.]

" Please don't steal our sunlight "

stay tuned....

[ This is what happends when its zero degrees out and Peter has been cooped up for three weeks]

I guess Im on a roll tonight.

After three years in Japan is fair to say we had been to Kamakura many many times and its was our favorite. But we had seen the temples, the buddah the hase kannon and such but on that summers day we felt that we wanted to go hiking ! In our "trusty" guidebook it said that there were hiking trails all around Kamakura so we thought now was the time.

We got off the train at Kita Kamakura [ North Kamakura] a few miles from Kamakura station and thought we would just "follow our nose as such. [ we did that a lot]

Following a trail we hiked about two hours and came up on a hill that was on the out skirts of Kamakura itself [may OK we were lost.

Problem was there was no trail but there was
this cave or very large hole in the ground that obviously went to the other side and onto Kamakura [ or so we thought]. The problem, if we jumped down this hole there would be no way to get back, we were committed. hey how bad could it be right ?

So we jumped. The cave-tunnel was well used and on the far end was a steep incline that further committed us to the path ahead. There were side caverns that seemed obviously used by meditating monks or whatever so we were only pretty confident that we were not lost. Right.

With the cave and the cliff behind us we were committed, no going back even if we wanted to. So.. forward...slowly.

The forest gave way to a clearing that was well tended and buildings in the distance..temple buildings. We had "hiked our way into the backside of a Buddhist temple. With heads held high [ in total ignorance] we slowly walked forward, doom and gloom growing as we were now pretty sure we were not where we were supposed to be.

Down the trail came a young boy, about 12, dressed in a orange robe and head shaven. He stopped, surprised at us on his way to the compost pile. Maybe we were Kamis or something, his eyes were wide as the moon.

He bowed..we bowed

Out of no where came his superior. A 30 something monk with a very harsh look on his face.. We were busted !!!

Now I am glad my Japanese was not that good as what he growled at us probably was not that taranslatable as friendly but might have been something like...' What are you idiots doing here !!! this is forbidden !!!
You have committed a crime against the Buddah and will forfit your lives!!!..off with their heads !!

naturally we were embarrassed.

It crossed my mind that being US military personal would be of little help as we would be subject to imprisonment, torture, or reaming out for the rest of our miserable lives. What was the penalty for this ??

In my most humble Japanese I tried to explain that we were lost and walking and we were very very sorry. Maybe that would midigate our sentances to just sweeping the floors for the rest of our lives. I also thought. Will they let me use the telephone to call in my absence, wouldn't want to be AWOL..silly me.. monks do not use phones do they ??
The head monk turned and marched through the courtyard, we tresspassers casually following while our fate was in the balance.

Where was he taking us ?

The courtyard opened up to a larger courtyard where dozens of teenage monkettes were sweeping the packed dirt. It was like boot camp, the dirt didn't need sweeping, it was "training" or punishment...

OK..this is good, they will shave my head..been there, and sweep the parade grounds...done that...

Onward, and the outside gate was coming into view. Closer..our freedom at hand.

The looks on the faces of the Japanese tourists on the outside of the gate was of wonderment confusion and total disbelief.

The monk opened the gate with some more choice phrases which might have been something like. " Don't you ever.. ect and if I catch you here again...ect...

We bowed very deeply, knowing our freedom was at hand and thanked him for his kindness which no doubt confused the Japanese tourists even more..

The gate slammed shut. We were free !! and he stormed away. In final tribute I took a picture of his backside as he fumed away.

Getting some eats outside Bayside Courts was a favorite of mine. The street vendors had soba and yakitori and yes, was very inexpensive. Around 100Y I believe. I also used the little red book but it didn't help much when on the train. More than few times I'd miss my stop, unable to understand anything the train conductor was saying. Add to that the station names were written in Japanese.

Throughout life certain memories remain vivid.
My experiences in Japan are that.

Barbara

Well I did it. I watched Battle of the Pacific again.

I upgrade my comments. This is a pretty well done movie. Especially the music.

The characterization of the "out of shape" Americans I now think was intentional to demonstrate the contrast between the two sides. Perhaps Im wrong.

I still hold to improbability of the main character, the American Captain, being able to speak such perfect Japanese in two years in Japan as the story tells. A more plausible explanation would be that his family were there several years, during his childhood, and he was taught by a maid.

I liked hearing the language again even though I didn't understand any of it.
Thank goodness for subtitles.

I would like to hear others thoughts.

The train stations had the station name in both Japanese and English. But you had to keep a good eye pealed. We never missed our stop.

Once, on a trip to Shimoda we made a mistake and got off at a station we thought was a transfer. It wasn't. Instead of the express train we had to wait for the local train which set us back several hours.

Shimoda was gust wonderful. A fishing village
with nice beaches and a tramway to the top of a mountain. We walked along the fishing pier when the boats come back and a nice man gave us a fish, which we carried back to the hotel. They met us at the door and promptly releaved us of it. they cooked it and we had it for dinner.

We went for a walk through a cavern that was apparently a WW2 gun emplacement to cover the beach in case of invasion. The cresant shaped beach was out of a postcard, until we came upon a small group of Japanese people that were stairing down at something washed up. We got closer. It was a human body. We turned around. Sad. probably a fisherman.

A friend of our family, Robert Lang, was a commercial photographer, living with his Japanese wife in Kamakura. His specialty was film strips and movies for McGraw-Hill publishing. The Langs eked out a spare living in a rented house about 5 minutes walk from the Buddha statue.

I accompanied Mr. Lang on several of his projects in the 1950s when japan was still engaged in producing silk and had farms that supplied the silk worm moths and cocoons that led up to the spinning of the silk thread.

One day we were traveling by train to a remote town and I went exploring on the cars connected to our car. One of the cars was jammed with people, many standing, holding on to straps, swaying back and forth as the train made its way.

Suddenly a man swung his right hand in a series of karate chops, flattening a guy nearby. Turns out the fellow on the floor was a pickpocket and he had picked the absolutely wrong pocket; that of a plain clothes policeman.

I raced back to tell Mr. Lang about what I'd observed but he was napping and when he awoke, his advice was to stay away from the scene of the crime...

I enjoyed your stories. They were interesting. I particularly liked Barbara's reminiscences though, as percolating in my brain is the hope to write a (fiction) story that would touch on (but not be primarily about) the "stragglers." One thing I am wondering is when dependents were first allowed to accompany service members in Japan itself...anybody have any insight on this?

Peter, to answer your question, I was in Japan 1961-1964. First half of the time in Hayama, Kanagawa-ken, second half in Nagasaki-ken.

Wata Geiru-san - Lots of info here: http://yohidevils.com/

I notice that the yo hi site has been completely re done. It lacks the charm of the old site but has nice new features, especially lots of Vidios.

On their old site it showed a "housing area"
at Yamashita Park in 46 ? So there were dependents then. Thanks for the update.
Ok, what does Wata Geiru stand for? Don't mean to pry, its just cuz I wanta know.

Peter-san - Your old brain is losing it. We've been through this before.
http://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?171+6789
1946 map.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/japan_city_plans/txu-oclc-6549645-1...

;-)

It was over a year ago, good memory Dave-san! Hope that satisfies your curiosity (again), Peter-san! :) :)

Dave-san
Ouch !

You are probably right. it is a little difficult to recall every detail as to what
each of us remembers after all of this time.
I was trying to help wata geiru, with his inquiry.
Forgive me for repeating myself.

Funny, I can't remember most of the stuff I posted in this forum, so hope I didn't tell any lies in case I have to repeat it. However, I can remember almost everything I did at Hakuraku and Kishine Barracks 45+ years ago, at least the highlights, anyway!

I made a small snowman...

And stuck a stick in it....

DIE WINTER !!!

You did help me, Peter. :)