Yokohama Navy Exchange was where?

Peter and I met on this page. I was long gone from Yokohama when the Viet Nam era came around, which set the stage for the US Army's return to Yokohama and Peter's arrival. The city was under the Army until 1959, then it became a Navy base. This was winding down in the late 60s when the need arose for Army support services to SE Asia.
I'm glad you found Kunio's story in the earlier posts. Kunio was a book reviewer at the Washington Post. I think he is retired now.
I didn't know it but Kunio and I crossed paths many times in my Yokohama neighborhood in the 50s. He knew the secret of the Ten Yen Store (where old comic books would magically appear, in perfect condition.) The two or three American kids who knew about this place KNEW it was some sort of cosmic time/place interface. How else would seemingly uncirculated Superman comics from 1950 appear in dusty stacks of Japanese newspapers?
I went to school at Nasugbu Beach Elementary, which was in the Yo-Hi building. For a couple of years, grades 4-5, I went to Yokohama International School, which was not too far from St. Joseph's, on the Bluff route. St. Joseph's had a more international group of kids than YIS did. Our kids were mostly from the UK. We had English text books, Pounds, shillings and pence and a UK version of world history. YIS still exists and now offers classes through high school. This is where I met Mr. Yajima (the German guy) and Mr. Stubbs, a wonderful Englishman who taught English, journalism, etc. He was very cool and didn't mind being called 'Stubbsie."
I wrote YIS some years ago, asking what became of Stubbs. They wrote back and thanked me for my application and said my resume would be kept on file for a year...

Thanks for the post. My wife and I stay at the Red Lion Inn when we are in Stockbridge. They have a great bar{coffee too].Won't be for a while perhaps fall. Hopefully before you return to NYC. Glad you and Eric got the school thing sourted out. Eric and I have much in common about Yokohama even as we were several years apart. There was another poster Wally who was there when I was but have not herd from him since July. Also Lori. This forum has been a wonderful way to rebild recollections and I treasure it very much. Eric,, stay cool [ I mean it] dangerious heat your way.

Hi Peter and Eric - thought you might like to hear how I came to spend WW 2 in Japan: my father had an older sister (Margarete) who had a relationship with a Japanese lawyer in Berlin - this would probably have been in the late '20's, early '30's. When her friend returned to Japan, Margarete followed him there, taking her older sister Clara with her. When the war started they wound up not marrying, but remained friends until they died. Clara set up a milliner's shop in Tokyo, designing/selling ladies' hats. Among her customers was the Princess Takamatsu (I think that's her name), who was quite westernized in dress, apparently (and for whom she designed hats even after moving to NY in 1948). In 1939, after experiencing "Cristalnacht" in Germany, my parents finally decided they had to leave. Clara in Japan somehow contacted Mr. Suzuki, the well-known inventor of a method of teaching violin to very young children. Mr Suzuki, who had a German wife, didn't know Clara, or my father, but he wrote a letter guaranteeing my father a job (my father was a violinist). This enabled us to be admitted to Japan. We came by boat (the Lloyd Triestino line) starting in Trieste, Italy, stopping in Shanghai, then through the Indian Ocean and on to Japan. I was then a year old. We settled in Tokyo - I'm not sure but it may have been in a place called Ripongi? - where we remained until 1942, and where I attended a Japanese school. When the bombings started we, along with most if not all other refugees, moved to Karuizawa, which was not bombed by the Allies who apparently knew of the presence there of refugees. I started in a German school, which I did not like, and which burned down one evening. I was then sent to St Maur's, where I first heard English. In 1945, my Mom got her job in Yokohama with the ARC and I started 3 years of schooling at St Joseph's. We were admitted into the US in 1948 as "stateless" persons after locating relatives in NYC. My Mom and I came here aboard a freighter called the USS President Grant on a trip that included 2000 animals/birds from Thailand (which wound up at the St Louis Zoo, according to a newspaper announcement I still have) and which took a few weeks. We became proud and grateful citizens in NYC of this amazing country in 1954. I have not been back to Japan, but would like sometime soon to go, but have traveled to Europe and elsewhere on vacation.
Best - Steffi

What a world class story. You certainly have been through a lot. Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm sure you have a lot more to tell of the details of you living in Japan and your early life. I can just imagine that ship passage with all those animals .. like Noah's ark. Makes my personal experiences a little pale by comparison. Wonderful experiences if not very difficult given the times. I am glad your parents made the choices that they did. I hate to imagine what the alternative might have been. You know what I mean. All the best to you! Enjoy the rain in Stockbridge.

Steffi;
Your sailing adventure must've been a once in a lifetime adventure.
My travels to Japan were also aboard ships, operated by the Military Sea Transportation service or MSTS. This agency was an Army/Navy highbred, born in 1949 by combining the Navy and Army Transport corps.
The ships were almost all named for Army generals and carried troops on the bow and fantail sections and military families in five or six decks in the midsection.
I made six 2 week crossings on five different ships including the General W. O. Darby, The Gen E. D. Patrick, the Gen. G. M. Randall, the Gen M.M. Patrick and finally, the Gen. W. A. Mann. Each trip sailed out of and returned to Seattle except the last return which was completed in Oakland, CA.
We got off the boat and caught a cab to the Lane Buick dealership where we picked up a new '61 Buick wagon and headed home with some of our house goods and our dog.
I'm intrigued by the characters you were acquainted with in Yokohama, similar to the worldly personalities we met there. Your comments brought back a memory of a French woman, Madame Coultie, who taught French in her little home. We all took French conversation from the Madame, in preparation for a new adventure planned for SE Asia.
In 1959 or 60, a lodge buddy of Dad's (who worked for International Paper) came to the conclusion that the US Army was running out of paper and could use a new supplier. The solution was a new paper mill, which he proposed to build, with dad's engineering help, in Laos. He knew some of the Lao royalty and was sure he could get a concession and all the timber the mill could ever use.
After nine years in Japan, the prospect of moving to another Asian nation did not excite me in the least; I wanted to go home. The hand of fate intervened as dad suffered a heart attack and had to take early retirement, our Laos adventure cancelled.
The lodge buddy was Herb Gallop, who had knwn my dad back in the 1930s in Shanghai. As a young man, dad had been a commercial pilot for China National Airline Company, owned at the time by American Airlines. They were both members of the Sinum Masonic Lodge and had lost track of one another during the war years.
When dad arrived in Japan in the late 40s he was amazed to find Herb and many of his old friends from Shanghai in Tokyo. They had moved the lodge and their business affairs there in '49 when the mainland fell to the Communists. Dad kept his membership in the lodge until his death in 1966. The lodge still operates and has a related organization called Torii-Oasis Shrine Club.
As I mentioned to Peter some time ago, one of the hardest things to explain to the Japanese was why seemingly normal, sober Americans would dress up like Arabs for a street parade and park picnic.

Hi - The rain in Stockbridge stopped suddenly midday.The weather is truly changeable and unpredictable in New England now - mild sunshine one minute, angry storms the next. My husband and I think this is a symptom of climate change, because this kind of thing seems more typical of other areas, like Colorado, for example. Last week we were outdoors, when there was suddenly a terrific wind - trees bending, loud whirring, but no rain or storming - just wind that eventually died down. Very weird.
The stories you tell of your experiences in Japan are truly interesting. I admire your memory, Eric - you were just a child but apparently a very alert one - you knew a lot about what was happening around you. There is a lot I don't know - I wish I'd made a note of things and asked more questions, and also made more of an effort after we left Japan to remember my Japanese, which was my primary language at one time. Now words just float into my brain, but I can't conduct a coherent Japanese conversation, nor understand most of what I hear. I've found the info I wanted about the schools I attended - perhaps at some point someone who was there at the same time will see this - maybe my friend Minette, for example. She had a Japanese father, a French mother, but was an American citizen, having been born in Hawaii. She and I wrote for a while, then lost contact. Also, my friend Guy, who lived across the street from where I lived in the gatehouse of the billets - he had a French father, who mostly played tennis, and a Russian mother who supported them. I really wonder where these people are now? We all attended St Joseph's together.
Peter, you mentioned that you live in New Hampshire. I have relatives in Durham, and my husband, who studied engineering at Dartmouth in the early '60's once had to spend an awful Thanksgiving night at Exeter hospital, which is actually a great place. The area is beautiful - though I remember how much everyone hated Mass. - they complained of Bostonians who were moving into their area and spoiling things - we thought it was quite funny! It's also interesting how each New England state has a feel of its own - Vermont, Conn. Mass. - they're all quite different from each other.
Best - Steffi

Steffi I graduated fron UNH in Durham, was married there and 10 days later was living in Yokohama. Exeter is 10 minutes from here and a nice town dispite the huge impersonal hospital. i moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts and never looked back. Well almost. People did joke about out of towners that moved into the state and then wanted to remake it into the kind of place that they supposedly escaped from. Looks like the next week will be rainy and cool. This means the fall in the Birkshires should be really vivid. I hope you have a place there that you can spend ''off season time. My wife at that time was raised in Etna Village just outside of Darthmouth, a very fine school. I have been working on my Japanese lately and have found help on Youtube you might try it and see if some more comes back. Try Japanese English conversation. Last week on out trip to NewYork and New Jersey I ran into a Japanese woman selling leather celphone cases at one of the interstste stops. It was a challenge but we spoke for about 20 minutes I'm told. It was alot of fun. The trip down was a nightmare , driving in the worst thunderstormes I've ever seen and 2300 lightening hits in one hour. Next day we learned of a rare tornado in New hampshire. You are right we can't figure out Vermonters. Granolas with no gun laws.. oh well thats why life is so interesting. I could use some hot weather to enjoy the outside before fall, Eric must think I'm crazy after the heat he has had. Hope your ''bump'' isn't too bad. My first apartment in Yokohama was in a converted Chinese Doctors hospital right on the canal accross from Motomachi. I wallked accross the bridge one day and saw these long flight of steps that now I know go up to the Bluffs. I didn't climb them as I guess I didn't want to use the time and effort. Wish I had now as I now know that the foreign section of Yokohama was there including the school you went to. My other apartment was in Naka-Ku on a wonderful hill called Medori Gaoka or Green Hills. We could see Mount Fuji on a clear day [ there was only one that I remember] from the rooftop. Using the new Virtual earth I now know that my old apartment building is gone. Really don't understand it because it was a new building but the Japanese aparently dont mind tearing down buildings. The new construction since I was there is unbelieveable. Especially the subway system and roads or highways. I might have liked Japan in the 15th century. I hope they can keep it. How long have you been in NYC ? My wife and I have been talking that we might go there next winter. Normally don't care for big cities but I really would like to go to the Natural History Museum. Its been 30 years. Won't drive trains are pretty good now. Later.

I've lived in NYC since 1948, with a few years spent away in schools, and absolutely love it, except for summer months when we're in Stockbridge. It feels like the center of the universe. Everything that's bad, or great, and everything in between, can be found here. It's really an international city - some schools have over a hundred languages being spoken among students. People who expect to find a traditional Amer city are disappointed. It's the best place to be if you're a minority person, if you're crazily ambitious, if you want an open, accepting environment and don't mind the noise. If you haven't been here in 30 years I think you'll find it's a lot cleaner and tidier now. Unfortunately, as elsewhere, many of the interesting older, lower buildings along the avenues - those 6 stories and less - are being torn down in favor of modern glass/metal skyscrapers - I'm speaking of Manhattan, of course, not the outer boroughs as much. This is a shame, because it will eventually make the city look like all others. Also it's upsetting to hear of so much real estate being bought up by people from other countries with no vested interest in the city - ie, the Chrysler building, which should be a city historic landmark, now belongs to some business men from Dubai, I think! But I guess that's a result of our dropped dollar. Also, I don't think people realize how much greenery we have in NY, and beaches, parks, ballfields, zoos, aquariums, etc. It is really a lot more livable and family-friendly then you might realize. Best - Steffi

Steffi NYC sound wonderful thanks for the update. I'm not at all sure I would fit in very well as I have a bit of an adversion to large cities. You have given us encouragement to make that trip next winter. Yokohama was also a bussleing city alive with "strange" sights and sounds. Looking back I know now that there were many little dramas going on all about me but at the time I was only vaguely aware of it all. Now I know that people / goverments ect were more aware of me that I were of them is short I was oblivious. Like the day when I was thinking that I needed a telephone in our apartment. Phones were then hard to get and you had to wait to get one and it was a hassle. So just as I was thinking that I should get a phone there was a Knock on the door and there was the Japanese phone company to install my new phone ! These sourt of things seemed to happen all the time and I just thought they were coincidence. One night I had late duty on the docks. When i was done it was about three in the morning and I figured that I would have to walk home or sleep under a warehouse. At that moment a taxi came by and stopped and got in, I told the driver where i was going but he already knew ! As i was going home there were no other cabs about. As he pulled away I had an ah-ha moment. Something was happening but what I didn't know. There were dozens of these occurrances that to this day I have not figured out.

I guess big cities make a lot of people uncomfortable. But remember that, aside from the overwhelming "downtown" type places that you see in pictures, NY is just series of neighborhoods, often ethnic, with lots of great restaurants, often very reasonable. There are many people who live in one place - say lower Brooklyn - and rarely set foot in other sections. So you can think of NY as a set of towns.
Don't know what to make of your strange experiences in Japan - maybe they really were coincidences, or maybe you're just a lucky person, or maybe you were expressing your needs to influential people who could make things happen.
I'm impressed and inspired by your remembering your Japanese - I am very far from that. I will look at youtube and see if I can find places to help me relearn the language. I've been told that one never really forgets the initial first language you learned to think/reason in, that it's actually buried deep in one's brain, but who knows if that's true. Best - Steffi

Steffi I think I would term my language ability as " survival Japanese". At our little apartment there were neighborhood children that would be hanging around. My wife was a kindergarden teacher so getting to know them was pretty easy. There was noe sweet gilr named Miki which I think was a nickname. She and her mother would come over for "tea" and we would have " conversations" in Japanese and English. learning from a child worked very well for us as she used simple language and we laughed a lot. The mother who stayed pretty much in the backgroung was at first a little skeptical at first but came to understand that we were learning Japanese while teaching her daughter. In our final months in Japan my wife had a job in Tokyo teaching english at an after school class. She told me it was a little creepy as the parents would sit in a gallery and carefully scrutinize the class to be sure they were getting their moneys worth. I was very impressed with some of our friends English ability. One lady we came to know could speak flawless english. One day we three were going out and she gave directions to the cabdriver in Japanese. For a second I was stunned at her fine Japanese. Then I quickly remembered SHE was Japanese. We could talk so effortlessly it was a joy. She came to me once and asked me if she could ask me questions about Americans which was fine, sure.. lets say this.. she had very probing and insightful questions into everything from family relationships to personal and marital relationships. She was so sweet, she kept apologizing for her making me uncomfortable and when I told her it was OK she would continue with an even more probing and delicate inquiry. I realized that she did not have any young Americans to talk to. When she and my wife got together she would probe her even with more depth I'm sure, When I asked her what she and our friend talked about she blushed and just said "girl stuff" which was my hint to clam up. She was engaged to a Japanese man through and arranged marrage which I don't think was working out well. She actually visited us after our return to the states and stayed at our beach cottage in Little Neck Ipwsich. She could not believe the "food' on the beach, seaweed, muscles ect and cooked us a fantastic Japanese dinner from a few minutes scrounging. I wish I could find her now. Steffi, I expect that you lived in a Japanese stlye home? Mr Suzuki was well known for his teaching method. Did you learn violin as well? No real regrets but I would have liked to learn the Koto. I tried it once and seemed to have a nack for it.

Back when we lived in Minnesota, the University of MN sponsored a dozen Japanese teachers of English to come to the Twin Cities for a week. We applied to host one of these guys and drove downtown to pick up Muneo Suda, who was from Iwaki City, Fukushima.
Muneo spent several days with us and fished a while on Prior Lake, MN where we lived. I think he believed my Japanese was better than it was because he would lapse into 100 % Nihon in mid-sentence. Sometimes I would understand, picking up clues from words I remembered, sometimes it was a blank.
At a dinner in St. Paul, his Japanese pals ribbed him about his name, which they thought somehow brought him to Minnesota.
Regards,

Eric and Steffi Our friends in the rock group The Voltage didn't speak very good english and I think my Japanese was better than their english. Once they were at our apartment and we were going over lyrics and music. The leader of the group Chibita, asked me what words ment to some of the songs they had learned. This was a challenge as some lyrics like doo-wah don't translate well at all. Anyway there was a song that they did in english which due to the slur and mumble I never could understand what the lyrics were. So I asked him to repete these words slowly and more clearly so I could then tell him what they ment. What a riot, as he repeateed the phrases they were still mumbled and jumbled only slower. They had obviously learned the lyrics, rote, and did not know what they were saying, neither did I. I'm not sure they believed that I did not know what they were saying and they had this qiuck discussion in Japanese to the effect that why would we not want to tell them what the lyrics ment. Was this some kind of secret or in- joke. I tried to convince them that I also didn't know what the lyrics ment. I don't think I was able to do that. I did better face to face as I could use gestures and such. Making a phone call was much harder as there were no hand gestures to help me. Eric I did not quite get the point of your story. How would Mr. Sudas name be a joke to get him a job in Minn ? Perhaps I'm a little thick today.

After we came to the States, my Mom looked for a way for me to take Japanese language lessons so I would remember my first language. She took me to Columbia Univ, which was the only place in the area with a Japanese department. They suggested a Japanese church in the area, which had a large number of Japanese people in it at the time, with a lot of nisei and sansei children who were also forgetting their Japanese. On Saturday mornings, we learned to read and write - mostly katakana, and hiragana, with kanji thrown in as we progressed. I still have some of the schoolbooks we used. But what happened was that as I was learning this, I was forgetting the speaking part. I attended for several years, but then lost interest in favor of piano and viola lessons, adolescent concerns, and doing my utmost to become an American - I really didn't want to be seen as "different" in any way, and by the time I became interested again, it was too late. Too bad. My Mom, on the other hand, had learned to speak as an adult, and therefore remembered it a whole lot better than I did.
As for the housing we occupied in Japan, I would describe it mostly as modified/traditional Japanese housing which was furnished by my Mom with European beds and furniture - we did not sleep or sit much on the floor, and the walls were not paper screens, they were regular wood or plaster. I don't remember if the floors were tatami, because we had rugs covering them, but we did take off our shoes indoors (which I and my family do to this day!). Of course the big thing missing was centralized heating, and the toilets/bathrooms were certainly different - the crouch-down kind. In Karuizawa, however, we lived in a truly Japanese house in an apartment over a Japanese barber shop. I remember having nightmares about falling into the toilet there, which was downstairs for everyone, and basically a large open pit, with disgusting crawly things in it! On the "bluff" in Yokohama, however, all the housing that I remember was European, more or less. Best - Steffi

Steffi How old were you when you left Japan ? I figure you must have been 5 or 6.

Steffi I went back over your post and figured you must have stayed in Japan untill about the age of 8 or 9. As you were only a year old Japan was really the first country that you remember. How difficult it must have been for a young child of a different race to try and fit in. Not like in germany where there is not a physical difference. We sometimes would like to have been a"fly on the wall" to observe and even to have some privacy or solitude but of course that was impossible. I remember one time when I had some solitude in Yokohama of all places at sankien gardens which Eric knows quite well having lived almost next to it. My wife was away on a trip and I went there and found myself off the beaten path in a bamboo thickett. Just layed down and felt the warm breeze in the swaying bamboo. Perhaps I'd make a good hermit. Where is summer! Wore a jacket today.. is in the 60's!

Well, I was a GI in Japan, so what can I say? You can stick my picture in one of those Kamiseya party pictures and I fit right in. I didn't take any Japanese language or culture classes. I hung out with Japanese girlfriends, and all the Japanese I knew I learned from them, which I found out later was feminine Japanese that is not spoken by men. When I was off duty I went from the Kishine NCO club to the Zebra Club to the Peanut Club and ended up at the Koran, and sometimes to the VFW club, or the Cow Bell, or the Tasagara, or the SandS club in Tokyo. In the summer I spent a lot of time on the beaches at Kamakura and Enoshima drinking Akadama wine. Some Japanese friends took me to places like Nikko, Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, etc., but most of the time I just partied. I'm not exactly proud of it, but the employees of the Kirin brewery sure appreciated me.

Hey Wally.. were you been? Thats Peanuts Plural. Glad you are back.. 1 and 2.[ sorry folks] bit of an inside joke, you can find it if you want. What a place the Peanuts Club. I understand that the cockroaches were the biggest in Naka-Ku. Except for my first apartment. My ex reminded me that our little kitty would catch them after dark and wake her up crunching on them. The kitty also scratched out the shoji screens.oops. Landlord was ok about it but we fixed it before we moved.

We're back, and the weather is suddenly cold. Hope it warms up again - I'm not ready for fall. In NYC we had needed the airconditioning. Peter, I was 1 when we arrived in Japan and close to 10 when we moved to the US. As for growing up "different", I guess that just felt normal to me, and not totally unpleasant. I knew other children who were different as well, and since I spoke perfect Japanese, had curly hair, which was much admired, and was a generally outgoing but polite kid, I was treated very well, as someone special. When the war ended and the Amer occupation started, I saw my first coca cola, comic strips radio shows (Fanny Brice, Popeye, the Lone Ranger,
the Shadow, etc). That was the beginning of my Americanization. Best - Steffi

Hey, Steffi;
It is curious that your Americanization came via Jpan, as mine did. I was in the first grade (briefly) in the US, then swept up to Japan and transported back and forth several times.
I got a taste of American TV on one of our trips back to the US, then saw American TV dubbed in Janaese in NHK in the 50's. There was even a Japanese spin-off featureing a caped Japanese Superhero and his pals on NHK who drove around Tokyo in a '52 Chevy.
Guess you had to be there...