[ This first letter was written on the rice paper letterhead provided to guests by the Hotel Kokusai Kanko in Tokyo.  Can't remember exactly, but I think the paper was thin enough to type an original and 6 carbon copies - meaning that only my closest friends, relatives and high school teachers received a copy.  We didn't have photocopiers in those days!
    It was typed on an ancient Navy typewriter in between mid-watch patrols at our Futenma base - that's between midnight and 6:00 am.  Comments added 4 decades later are indicated in the same color used here. ]

November 1961                              

Dear                     ,

        As you can see I have already been to Japan.  You can also see that I have too many people to type to so I'm making one letter and a few carbon copies.  Well the best way to start is when I arrived at San Francisco after leaving home.

        Well I checked in at T.I. (Treasure Island) and was confused from the start.  The base was strange and I didn't know anybody there.  But, luckily I met a fellow swaby who had just got back from Okinawa and had relatives in Frisco.  Well the first night we hit the town and saw all the sites that could be seen in one night.  It was the first time he road a trolly car.  It's a big thrill if you get on one that has happy drivers.

        I took off from T.I. on the llth, and stopped in Hawaii, Wake, and Japan.  The only long stop we had was at Japan so this other swaby whom I met on the way and I went to Tokyo and Tachikawa.

[ The other sailor was going to the Naval Air Station at Naha, Okinawa - 30 miles from my base at Futenma.  Even though I loaned him $20.00 in Tachikawa after his money ran out, repayment wasn't anticipated.  But, lo and behold, we both checked in at the payroll office in Naha at the same time.  He repaid the $20.00 - stating he was glad to be unburdened with the guilt of having left a debt unpaid.  We never saw each other again after that - primarily because of the distance between our bases and the fact that Whites and African Americans didn't mix together much in the Navy in those days.  There were separate liberty towns dedicated to serving Blacks where Whites normally didn't go.  But, while on liberty in Japan, we didn't know any better and just created our own "un-segregated" rules. ]


        Tokyo was very interesting but they couldn't understand us and we couldn't understand them.  It took me an hour to find a person to ask where I could buy some cigarettes, and he could only speak Chinese.  The hotel where I got this stationary is right next to the train station and is about the best in Tokyo.  It cost us about ten dollars for one night.  Which I thought was pretty good.

        After Tokyo we hit Tachikawa which is where most of my money went.  I met some storekeepers who were trying to no avail to teach me Japanese.  In turn I was trying to teach them Chinese.  We could write back and forth with pretty much success, but we couldn't (understand) each other's speech at all.

        After spending a good part of my money and getting accustomed to the Japanese way of life we left for Oki.

[ This of course being a letter home to close relatives and former high school teachers, what wasn't stated was that it was a couple bar girls who relieved us of most if not all our money.  We didn't spend much in Tokyo.  But, back in Tachikawa, while walking past a bar with dark blue windows and doors, a couple of very good looking Japanese girls our own age enticed us inside.  We stayed there from around 10:00 am to 4:00 pm - drinking beer, ordering food and sitting across from each other chatting and finding out about Japanese customs from the girls sitting next to each of us.  And, because these bar girls were paid a commission based upon how much we spent, they did their best to keep us entertained, happy and eager - one strategy being to keep a firm but gentle hand in our laps. 
    One part of the accustomization to the Japanese way of life, which by the way, I immediately and without reservation adapted to, was the unisex toilet.  We first discovered it at the main train station in Toyko, next door to the Kokusai Kanko Hotel, where young and old, male and female all shared the same clean and large lavatories.  In Tachikawa, the bar girl even came in while I was relieving myself of the last three large bottles of beer having been consumed.  The bottles were large but the contents were not that strong - it not being desirous to get a customer too drunk too quickly -- thereby losing further sales.  We didn't get falling down drunk, but couldn't walk a straight line by the time we left. ]

Dec 1961 - Futenma Station houseboy 1961 - Futenma Station sign Arrived here on the fifteenth and have lived happily ever since then.  We have houseboys to make our beds, shine our shoes, clean the barracks, do our laundry, and only for $2.50 a month.  The people of the Island are very nice and friendly.

[ There was one houseboy for every 30 (or so) of us, so they earned about $75 a month in total; but they also had to buy whatever supplies they needed that weren't provided by the U. S. Navy.  The older women in the houseboy's family did the laundry by smashing it with small rocks against boulders at the local 'not too clean' creek - it always came back clean, so there must have been clean water somewhere to rinse with before hanging it all to dry in the sun.  A U. S. Navy recruit earned only $78.00 a month back in 1960. ]

We have most of the time off and have a variety of things to do and places to go.  Some of the places to go are the numerous caves which are scattered all over the Island, the movie houses, bowling alleys, service clubs, and bars.  The bars are the most numerous and most popular and the most expensive, but I'm getting tired of them already and I've only been down to them a couple of times.  The beer is 80¢ a bottle so they are even more unattractive.  Saki, which is made from rice is only 20¢ so that is the drink I'm trying to learn to like.  It tastes like lighter fluid at first and gradually works into a gasoline taste.  But after a few you don't care what it tastes like any more, just as long as you don't swallow any matches it's O.K.

        Well that just about completes the first installment of the Oki. story.  Stand by for more to come.

Yours Truely,                              

[ Still a virgin at this time. ]              




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