Voyage Nine
SS Sturdy Beggar - Page 5
Some of the American soldiers didn't like the Japanese people, that you could see, but I didn't have anything against them. The Japanese soldiers had been cruel and barbaric but these old people and kids hadn't done anything. The people were very polite and friendly to me. A lot of them, especially the elderly, still dressed traditionally - robes rather than Western clothes. They smiled and bowed a lot - very polite or maybe they were just afraid of us. We went on the train to this one town that they had told us about that was nothing but "White" Russians, upper class Russians that had left for Japan during the Bolshevik Revolution. It was strange because you hardly saw any Japanese there - all Europeans. There was this big department store in Tokyo that had bombed out buildings all around but it hadn't been touched. They told me the owner was Japanese and that his wife was one of these "White Russians".
I don't know if they meant to miss it or not. Some refineries were intact. Maybe they had been owned by American companies before the war and that's why they weren't bombed. I think they tried to be pretty particular about what they bombed because they knew that we had the war won and they wanted as much captured intact as possible.
I was in a shop and I wanted to buy a kimono that was in a display case, but shop owner wouldn't sell it to me. He didn't speak English but somebody translated that it was very old and used special for weddings and that he kept it for display only. There was a Marine standing by and he came up and asked if I wanted it. I said yes, but that the man wouldn't sell it. He told the store owner to sell me the kimono, or more like threatened him into selling it. You could see that this Marine didn't much like Japanese and that he meant business. The store owner finally sold it to me while the Marine looked on. It wasn't cheap - I gave the Japanese what he asked for it. My oldest daughter has it now. The outer garment has gold embroidery and it is really something. I brought back a packet of black and white tourist photographs of scenic views of Japan - probably pre-war pictures that show how really pretty the place is.
We left Yokohama ( on November 18, 1945 )in the company of some other ships, but it wasn't a convoy as there was no escort. It was funny because for the first and only time during my life at sea we sailed with all our lights on and port holes open. Strange to look out at ships all lit up like Christmas trees, because I had become so used to blacked-out wartime conditions.