Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

Bernied VA

I was in The US Army in Yokohama when you were. Was stationed at Center pier as a food inspector.

I do not recall where Bay View was. Was it on the "Bluffs ?

Welcome to the thread.

Hello, there

The coffee shop "Chigusa" of Noge street Yokohama was opened by Mr. Mamoru Yoshida since 1933.

This shop owned about 6,000 sheets LP records.

Many jazz players listened to great sounds but he passed several years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v0UUKYSI3A

This old movie clip is a tale of the trolley car of Honmoku area.

Originally, Honmoku had many hills and was the area of the frontier district for a while. The tunnel of Mugita was opened for traffic and the trolley car began operation.

Those days people walked along the mountain path, and went to Honmoku.
For us, the trolley car was an important means of transportation once.

The trolley car of various form ran in the time. Moreover, since the factory of Kirin Brewery was near the railway, it was
utilized for conveyance of beer.
The slate is written about the origin of Japanese beer.

And the trolley car carried the passengers who went to the beach of Honmoku area in summer.

JR Negishi line was started 1964.
Those day was the high growth era of Japan. Bus spread it and the role of trolley was finished. They were operation about 60 years.

Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EcsI1lzNJZI

This is FANTASTIC !!!

Not only for the many memories that this brings back but....are you ready for this !!!

WE ARE ON THIS VIDEO !!!!

Yes, my former wife Ozzie [ Mary Ann]
can be seen at at 2:33 !! There is not doubt at all. None. Unfortunately I am not on this
with her. Also it shows only the back of her head and not the face.

Ok how am I so sure. ? Several ways.

First, well as you can believe, a person that you have known so well is instantly recognizable, from the pigtails, to the neck and arms to the legs and the carriage of the
frame ect.. its her.

Next, the school that she taught at had dress codes. She is wearing a white shirt and dark skirt..ok not that unique.

next, the trolley is heading south in the afternoon, due to the light, also she is with her school aide, whose name I do not recall, and am unsure on her aids name. She rode the trolley to our first apartment down by Chinatown by the canal near Motomachi. Later she did not ride the trolley home as it was closer, We moved to our newer apartment about 27 September 1997
as I looked at the old rental agreement that curiously I still have.

So this video was taken [ according to my analysis ] about the middle of September 1967.

I would love it if some Japanese speaker could read the script on this video and see if I am correct. IF this video was taken
prior to June 1967 or after October 1969 I would be incorrect. But don't think so.

How very curious that this should surface after all these years.

Thank you Kaoru-san for finding this.
and posting it.

The trolleys were a great way to get around as we could walk a few blocks to catch one and take it all the way to Yokohama Station and from there to anywhere.

I remember the conductors voice toning our
Kominato-gozimamas . Which is where we would get off.

How very special to see this. I was blown away.

Peter,
Bayview was the housing area on the hillside "above" Area 2 (which was adjacent to the Exchange/Commissary area - and the high school was in between them). Bayview was reached via the street nicknamed Fire Station Hill. Hope that helps.

Wow Peter-san. Looks like you hit the jackpot. Pretty unbelievable.

Hi Dave and Lori

Yes I guess it feels like the jackpot.

I was very very surprised. Its too bad that it is so short and that yours truly is not in there.

I know this might never happen but we went to the Bon odori festival held every year at
the parking lot at the exchange. Our last year there we dressed up in yukata and geta
and really got into it. Lets say we stood out just a little and were the subject of
lots of photographs clicking off and flashes
for hours. I tried to ignore them which probably encouraged the photographers both Japanese and Americans to take even more.
So some where out there, sitting in a forgotton dusty photo album or perhaps some 8mm film is this gaikokujin.

Ok I know where bayview is now.. One story there. Our apartment on Medori Gaoka was about a block from what I know know is Bayview. My wife [ seen in the Trolley video] was very sick. She suffered from what I believe was what was called Yokohama asthma, related to the pollution.
We had no telephone as it took about 6 months for a phone to get installed and US Military were on priority for that.
I walked the block and slipped through the hole in the chain link fence and walked up to a house to ask to use the phone. The nice woman was a little suspicious but let me call the Dispensory to make an appointment for her. When leaving I admired the view
out over the bay, very nice.

Now with google street maps I am able to go back to the street that we lived on. The apartment building is gone and in its place is a nice single family house. The neighborhood has changed almost completely
The only recognizable feature is the large stone wall that is made up of characteristic square stone blocks that you see all over.

Now, if I ever return to Japan, which looks less likely as years go on, I am not sure if I would go back to see what is gone, if you know what I mean.

Forrest Bull. I would love to see the pictures you have adquire while living in area 2. I have just opened group on Facebook called "You know you live at Yokohama Base Area 2 when". Please join this group. I am in process now of getting all my pictures together.

I suppose that any one alive remembers what happened 45 years ago today. I do.

I have related this before but...

We had decided, almost on the spur of the moment that we should climb Mt Fuji as the season was getting short and in several months we would be returning back to the states.

So on the 19th of July 1969 we took the train to Gotemba with just a small backpack
of clothes and cameras. Walking down the main street to catch the bus to the 5th station we were bombarded with vendors selling all kings of stuff. I stopped to look at a display of these long poles, climbing sticks if you were. They were all fresh and clean, newly cut wood, probably boxwood. The Japanese store keeper came up and said, " Fuji climbing poles"..very nice
must have. I wasn't that inclined until he showed me one that he had that had been used in a climb and had branding marks all over it. He said " up..up..up" and indicated that there were stations that would brand the poles at different heights...now that seemed cool but I still wasn't sold, so as I turned to walk away he said " good souviner " remember climb, have forever" ! Ok I was sold, we bought 2 and ran for the bus.

We reached the 5th station at about 1PM as we had planned and after a quick look around the gift shop there..more poles.. we hit the trail.

It was a long climb. Maybe 8 hours, with men with small habachis aling the way to brand our poles for 10 Yen. At about 10 PM we reached the 8th station and found a bunk in a hut, no reservations then. At around 2 or so, the Japanese started moving out. We followed their lead and continued up the mountain it was much steeper now, and seemingly endless. Then the tori gate and two massive statues on either side. It was the morning of July 20th.

At the top was a hut with two Shinto priests and we had our poles consecrated with two brands. Then the sunrise, not spectacular, but wonderful never the less. And a billion dollar view.

It was cold, colder than I had thought and we found refuge in a fairly large hut where they sold soba at high prices.

We found a couple of Americans, kids like us, with this marvelious new device, a transistor radio.

So we sat down with them. One guy was very intent on listening and hushed us up, saying here it comes, here it comes...
We were not sure what he was referring to.
Then he turned up the volume and pointed the radio to the small group.

Tranquility base here " The Eagle has landed".

For a brief second I was not sure what this was all about. Then the look on the face of the other guys there said it all. Smiles as wide as the Pacific.

" Were on the Moon !!!!

We jumped up, oblivious of the cold and starting to whoop it up !!! Naturally the reserved Japanese looked at us with initial distain. I pulled out my dictionary, which I still have, and shouted "otoko tsuki several times and pointed up. They saw the radio.. They got it !

There was some polite applause, many smiles
and one young Japanese guy my age, came over and shook my hand and the others and said something in Japanese that we didn't understand, but we got the meaning. It was a moment.

I ran over to the rim and took a picture of the crater, and then after contemplating the rim walk, which we passed on, and the cold getting worse even with the rising sun. We savored the moment for another 15 minutes or so, and then asking ourselves do we want to start the decent, we started down. After about 2 hours on the summit.

About 5 hours later we were back in Yokohama
all warm now, and turned on the TV. Just in time to see the now iconic picture of Neil Armstrong stepping of the LEM and those now famous words.

We looked at each other, what a day !!
And in the corner of the bedroom, leaned up and sitting on the tatami mat. Our two poles. All covered with fresh new brands from our climb.

45 years later, I still have mine, all brown now like an antique violin.
How strange. For 250 Yen each I was going to walk away, from that street vendor. Now, I wish I could find him and thank him for urging me to buy this pole, which I would not part with for any price. He was so right. " Remember climb...have forever"...

What a wonderful story, Peter -- well told! Thank you for the vicarious trip to Mount Fuji.

There is a little more to this story that has never been told, a part that I am not too proud of, but one that I will share with you when I have a moment later.

Meanwhile, I invite you to relate your experiences on that day.

Barbara, would you like to start ?

It was about 8 AM.
We had been on the summit for about 2 hours
and while it was cold there was no wind, to our surprise.

Standing on top of a strato volcano is an experience like no other. I looked out to the east, hoping to see Tokyo, Yokohama or some other place, with no luck. Looking down was disorienting. As one has no prior reference to the cone structure under foot at the sheer volume of Mt Fuji.

The clouds lazed across the Kwanto and then reaching the base of the mountain, rushed up
and seemingly exploded over the top. I looked for the bullet train to the south, again, nothing man made was visable.

Then time to go. We had learned from our new found friends with the transistor radio that
the actual moon walk wound be in about 5 hours, and would be live on TV. This we had to see ! But could we get home in time ?

The trail we came up was now to the north about 500 meters. I figured that if we started down from where we were that we would re-connect with it maybe about 500 yards down..er...I guess. So we went, and yes I was wrong, no trail but, hey it had to go somewhere, and we would get home eventually.
As it turned out we were on a slope perhaps known as the 12 league boots. No trail but
steep enough that if you set up a running motion like a cross country skier you could have this incredible sensation of covering huge distances with little effort and also cutting the decent time maybe more than half.

The summit faded away as we raced down the mountain to...where-ever we didn't know.
Then the "tree-line" of scrub bushes out of some horror film. We stopped to catch our breath, have the last sip of the little water we had, and continued on to ..we didn't know where.

Then a break. A "bus station" of sourts, an out of the way place. There were perhaps a hundred Japanese waiting for the bus. Finally one came and already being half full
took only a handful of passengers. OK we would catch the next one. Perhaps a hour passed and the next one was even fuller. At this rate it would be nightfall before we
got a seat on a bus.

So...or goal being to see the first steps on the moon. We prefabricated a story to get us on the bus and cut the waiting line. We told the people that we had to get to the airport to catch the plane back to the states. It was a lie, and one that I am not proud of. Maybe they felt sorry for us or cut us a pass as we were so brazen to tell a whopper like this, but it worked. We got the next bus faking a story. I felt terrible, and still do, it was an ugly move, one that I had vowed that I would be better than an ugly American would be.

The bus went to Gotemba and we headed to Yokohama proudly displaying our new Fuji poles. We were ignored, as if the people on the train knew instinctively that we had cut the line back at the bus stop.

As I have said we made it back to our apartment just in time for the historic moment, but it was tempered with the sweet and sour events of the day.

Perhaps this is silly by I would apologise to the people at that bus stop for being a self centered jerk. Especially there was an older woman, who I am sure did not buy our story. Her eyes and mine locked for a moment of truth. She knew.

Standing at the base of that mountain honesty prevailed.

I climbed Mt. Fuji with my Boy Scout troop in '53 when I was 12. Took nearly a whole day to climb and about two hours to come back down. My Fuji pole sported a Japanese flag with the elevation written under the sun in addition to the brands from the various stations. The pole disappeared during our move back to the states and I was told it got broken and was thrown out. A more likely explanation is that some thief from the Quartermaster Corps stole it.
I remember the moon landing well. I was out in my boat fishing off Beaufort, SC and listened to the radio broadcast coverage.

Interesting story about Yokohama in Washington Post today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-leader-abe-w...

What Abe really needs is to read & digest the works of Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises & Ayn Rand. In other words, embrace free market economics.
:)

Yeah, free market economics are really working out great for us — all of our manufacturing jobs have been transferred overseas, and now most jobs are minimum wage jobs. We have open borders, allowing unskilled and illiterate peasants to invade our country by the millions, and they are provided free healthcare and education services, and as they are granted amnesty they will go on welfare, all of which is costing the American working class trillions of dollars. In the meantime, the internet companies are bringing in professionals from India and China, who work for half what Americans will work for, and hundreds of thousands of American college graduates, who are loaded down with school debt, cannot get jobs. It is estimated that by 2040, the U.S. population will be a half billion, and when that occurs, three or four of the largest minority groups will be fighting each other for control of the government. The United States is destined to become one giant Detroit City, its rivers and waterways will be polluted like the Ganges river, and we will be a third world country! Our currency is becoming more and more devalued because we no longer produce anything, and the cost of energy is skyrocketing!
Meanwhile, would-be economists write stupid articles about how the Japanese economy is stagnant because of its declining population. However, the Japanese are developing robots to make up for a declining human work force. Check out pictures of Japan on the internet – their rivers and waterways are clean, they are building new skyscrapers everywhere, and the architecture is beautiful and futuristic. Japanese cities are clean and safe, there are no Detroits anywhere. Japan has not embraced multiculturalism, and there are no competing ethnic groups fighting each other for power. The Yen is strong, which is a good indication that their economy is not nearly as bad as what the economists claim it is.
Today’s economists say that population is good, the more people the better, but when do you reach the saturation point? Water is good, but too much water and you drown. In 2040, people in North America will be living in a polluted, dangerous society, while the Japanese people will be living in an unpolluted, safe and beautiful country!
Alexander Hamilton instituted tariffs on imported goods, which protected our manufacturing and created our middle class, resulting in the most productive economic system in the history of the world; Milton Friedman and his free market economic system destroyed the American middle class!

When I posted the link to this story http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-leader-abe-w... I wanted to point out how different Yokohama is today from the Yokohama I lived in during 1952 to 1954, not start a political discussion. The pictures that accompany the story are what impressed me, especially the cute kids in daycare. I probably should have titled this "Life in Yokohama today" instead of using part of the story's title.

"You in Japan" from National Archives

Try it;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXaDpjuhd1s&feature=player_embedded

Kaoru san:

I enjoyed the short film on streetcars and remember them very well. I could see the Sannotani streetcar stop from the front steps of our house, across Avenue D from Area 2.

I was sitting on the step at age ten or 11 when one of Japan's rock-and-roll earthquakes occurred. There was a streetcar changing direction at the stop, just as the 'quake rolled through.

Somehow, the car rocked back and forth and actually derailed, the overhead wire connection giving off a shower of sparks. There was a lot of yelling by the streetcar captain and his conductor. Fortunately the car was empty, except for the two employees.

A big Izu wrecker truck showed up about a half hour later and, in a few minutes, the streetcar was back on its way...

Thank You Kaoru-san for posting
"You in Japan"

I am usually suspicious of "propaganda" but in this case I found the video, while dated,
to be generally acceptable. These training films however seem to portray GIs in a superior position that could have done better. Given the date that it was done [50's ?] I suppose we can give them a pass and consider it a "historical" piece. Although slanted.

I do give them credit for providing some orientation for the GIs coming to Japan. I
only got a quick briefing after about a month being there. And then the briefing was
almost all about Navy housing and their rules and regulations, nothing about Japan and the opportunities for travel and sightseeing.

I think that the US Military could have done a much better job in briefing us about the country we were going to live in. This was a serious shortsightedness.