The following is excerpted from Battle for the Abbey, An Anthology by Adrian Flakoll

II. The Occupation of Japan

By Adrian Flakoll

The troopship, USS Wharton, that carried me, and about 1500 other sailors to Japan, crossed the Pacific far north of Hawaii in the winter of 1945-46. It was very cold the entire trip, which took about two weeks.

I was assigned a cot that was third in the vertical line of five up the bulkhead. The quarters were jammed from deck to overhead and we were in the virtual bottom of the hull. The stench was overpowering. We were ankle deep in disgorged foodstuff since we left San Francisco, as all hands had been seasick for days. Before departure, lunch, featuring greasy fried pork chops, was served to the multitude. About two hours later we left port and encountered very heavy swells as the ship headed out through the Golden Gate. Within minutes the heads were full of sick sailors and the rest were hanging over the side until marine guards would herd them away.

I didn't eat the pork chops so I didn’t get seasick, but maybe that was worse in terms of tolerating the abominable conditions. I determined that I would find a way to sleep in better surroundings and have access to fresh water showers, which turned out to be realized by volunteering for KP duty.

What’s That Smell?

The day that we were supposed to arrive in Japan dawned very cold and brilliantly clear. Even before we sighted a snowcapped peak on the horizon, Mt. Fujiyama, there was a musty smell that came right through the briny odor of the white-capped swells of the sea. It smelled like a steamer trunk that had been opened after decades of storage in the attic. That was the smell of Japan that would hover over us all of the time we were there. It wasn’t an offensive odor but it clung to everything on shore and, eventually, to everything in my sea bag. It was still there months later after I had long since left Japan.

When we approached Tokyo Bay a Japanese pilot was put aboard to bring the ship to its anchorage. That was sort of a jarring sight, to have this uniformed Japanese officer come aboard to bring us in, when only a few months earlier we were at war with these people.

Over the Side

After anchoring, we were called on deck with all of our belongings in our sea bag that we slung over our shoulder. We then clambered over the side to lower ourselves down a cargo net into a LCVP bobbing about 20 feet below. When I went over the side my heavy sea bag shifted and I almost was jerked off the net.

I thought about all of those guys that preceded us in the many invasions, doing the same thing with their weapons, ammo, backpacks, weighing more than 100 pounds and knowing that they were going to be met with lots of hot projectiles on the boat ride to the beach. I wondered how many of them had slipped and fallen to the boats below, getting a very bad start for the day.

We went ashore where we were parceled out to various ship assignments and then to be taken to our new “homes."

Ship of Hooligans

The group of a dozen or so to which I was assigned was a motley-looking bunch. It turned out that the majority were parolees from Portsmouth Naval Prison. These fellows were all former convicts, most of them doing time for desertion. They were being given the opportunity to make up their “bad time” and, if all went well, earn an administrative discharge rather than a dishonorable one. Also, I’m sure that the Navy didn’t want to have the expense of keeping these fellows in prison if they could get rid of them in a reasonable manner. So, these were my new shipmates.

It turned out that all of them had psychological problems of one sort or another, but they weren’t really bad guys.  Common traits of these fellows were their lack of respect for authority and a deprived sense of personal responsibility. As time went by on the USS Yuma, some of them would go AWOL more than once.

We were taken aboard the USS Yuma, ATF-94, a seagoing tugboat. ATF stood for “Attack Tug?Fleet.” It was labeled an attack boat because it had a three-inch gun mounted in front of the bridge, two 20 mm guns and two 40 mm guns on both port and starboard gun wells. It had survived the Okinawa kamikaze battle and had later pulled several destroyers off the beach on Okinawa that had been driven ashore by a powerful typhoon. The Yuma had earned two battle stars during the recent hostilities.

Fleet tugboats were named after American Indian tribes and there were many of them in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, but we were the only one in Tokyo Bay at the time.

USS Yuma, ATF-94, Tokyo Bay, 1946

When I arrived in Tokyo Bay in late January 1946, the devastation of the war that had concluded only six months previously was not immediately discernible from the troopship’s anchorage. The harbor did not appear to be heavily damaged. We were in the vicinity of Yokohama. But on the way to join our ship in Yokosuka (pronounced “Yokuska”) we could see that the city of more than two million people had been completely leveled by the B-29s under the command of Gen. Curtis LeMay. The carpet-bombing with incendiary bombs had destroyed the entire city. But there were peculiar exceptions. Two uncompleted large cargo ships on the ways in a shipyard were untouched. The one standing brick building of about five floors was undamaged. The Red Cross requisitioned the building for their headquarters and doughnut factory. Some people had returned to try and put things back together, but the city appeared to be essentially deserted.

The Yuma was stationed at the major Japanese naval base in Yokosuka, located in Tokyo Bay south of Yokohama. When we boarded, there were many topmasts showing above the surface of the water. These were scuttled Japanese naval ships in the immediate area. Yuma was involved in salvaging as many of those ships on the bottom as possible. However, it was also on call for rescue and salvage assignments at sea as might be required. It turned out that we would spend quite a bit of time at sea searching for and salvaging vessels, most of which had been abandoned during violent storms.

In Yokosuka, the Yuma was docked in an area jammed with other ships as well as the visible topmasts of the scuttled Japanese naval vessels. Yuma had the only qualified hard hat deep-sea diver. He was utilized extensively in the salvage operations.

I met "Pete," (I don't remember his real name) the diver, a day or so after reporting aboard. New crewmembers were given a familiarization tour of the ship. Pete was in charge of the paint locker. He was a thin fellow, had hollow cheekbones, narrow mustache, slightly graying hair and the unmistakable look of a chronic alcoholic. He was rated as a Painter 3/c, obviously the result of more than one captain’s mast judicial hearing. Here was the ONLY (to my knowledge) qualified diver in all of Tokyo Bay; he should have been, and probably had been, a Chief Petty Officer. 

I met the skipper, a mustang senior lieutenant, when I went aboard and never saw him again for several weeks. He spent most of his time in his cabin or on the bridge as far as I knew. He delegated duties and only occasionally made an appearance on deck. He fancied himself to be a navigator, much to the displeasure of the navigation officer, who had to correct the mistakes after the skipper had messed up the charted course on several occasions.

The ship had an officers' mess, much to my surprise. Also, they had a mess attendant to serve them in white coat. He was a black sailor who came aboard some time after I had. Those were the days of the segregated Navy. He could not sleep in the white crew’s quarters so he was assigned a spot in the chain locker.  Understandably, he was an angry man. He only spoke when spoken to. He had no friends aboard. It was a sad and stark reminder of the rules of the white man’s Navy on this small ship. I felt sorry for his unhappy lot, particularly because his job was so boring and his life so acutely solitary.

 The ship had a wartime complement of fifty-five, including four commissioned officers, two chief warrant officers and one chief petty officer who ate with the officers. This was about twice the number of crewmembers that were authorized in peacetime. We continued to operate under wartime conditions during the time we were in Japan.

There were two radiomen who were suspected of being “queer.” They stayed to themselves, bothered no one and we reciprocated. They did their jobs competently. I had no idea whether the rumors about their sexual preferences were correct or not, but no one seemed to be upset. Race was a much larger issue at that time and place.

We had a Cocker Spaniel mascot, “Scuttlebutt,” who always knew before the rest of us that we were going to sea. He alerted us by running around the deck barking his head off. Moments later the engines would start up and, sure enough, the bosun’s pipe whistled all hands on deck and to their stations. Scuttlebutt was a nice dog, but he had collected several diseases and bad habits while on shore leave over the years. One late night, returning from a rare ship’s party, I recall Scuttlebutt being carried aboard, all four feet in the air, head lolling while he howled softly and pitifully to himself. Drunk again on beer provided by his shipmates!

Tokyo Bay was filled with U.S. Navy ships as well as some badly damaged but floating Japanese capital ships. The Japanese ships, destined to be towed to the Bikini Atoll for the atomic bomb tests, sat at anchor, deserted and forlorn.

One day, some of us were taken out to a Japanese destroyer just to give us the opportunity to look it over. The ship was undamaged and reasonably shipshape. It was not as jam-packed with electronic gear as were U.S. destroyers. Of interest were the crew quarters where a wooden bench ran around the interior perimeter of the hull. That is where the crewmembers slept, head to foot. There was no sign of mattresses or other creature comforts. The below water part of the hull was wooden while the rest of the ship above the waterline was metal. The reason for the wooden hull was so that it wouldn’t attract magnetic mines, which the Japanese had indiscriminately loosed on the seas surrounding their homeland.

On another day, we were taken to an armory where there were hundreds of Japanese rifles and machine guns, all .25 caliber weapons. I was struck with how simple and relatively crude the weapons were. The wooden stocks were not as smooth and polished as were U.S. carbines. The metal parts were quite well made, however. We were told that we could take a rifle and bayonet if we wanted to do so. Most of us took advantage of that. I kept the weapon for a few months. I eventually tossed it overboard. I kept the bayonet, and I still have it, but the rifle was too bothersome to haul around.

Life at sea

 We were always on the look out for mines while at sea on search and salvage assignments. On several occasions, we spotted mines (not an easy task) and had to circle in on them to detonate them. They could usually be dispatched with the 20mm guns. On one such encounter, however, the ship’s marksman had to use a rifle to try and hit one of the buttons on the bobbing mine. The sea was running with 15-foot swells, the wind was blowing whitecaps, and the ship was constantly shifting under his feet, so he could not hit his target. He told the helmsman to head directly for the mine and make a turn at about 50 feet from the mine. That put the mine very close, directly off the port side of the ship when it finally exploded with an enormous bang! It threw a geyser of water high in the air and lots of shrapnel all over Yuma. I was standing in a hatchway on that side and ducked inside and only got wet. Fortunately, the flying metal hit no one.

On a Sunday evening, we were suddenly ordered out on a search mission to find a barge that had broken loose from its tow ship. It was snowing, a number of our shipmates had not yet returned from weekend liberty, and the radar was not working. In spite of that, we cranked up and headed out of port at high speed, probably about 12-14 knots. Visibility was next to nil as we headed for the high seas. I was on watch on the fantail when I heard some screaming and the ship suddenly started to shudder and shake violently. We were stopping and then backing up at flank speed. I had been knocked off my feet but I struggled to the back of the fantail, looked over the side and saw mud bubbling up and spewing out behind us as the propeller churned through the shallow water. We had almost beached the ship on a small island, the only one, in that part of Tokyo Bay! Not a good omen.

For the next 48 hours, we struggled through the most violent storm that I had ever witnessed up to that time of my young life. As the old seafaring ditty goes, “The wind blew and the shit flew, and we didn’t get back for a day or two.”

 I had the 2400 to 0400 watch the second night out. We had been battling the wind and seas for about 36 hours straight. I reported to the bridge in my foul weather gear and was told to go out on the wing of the bridge that was unprotected from the elements. I was supposed to be looking for mines, but all I could see were the huge, black swells and the water flying by in the 30-40 knot wind. Once in awhile there would be a flash of lightening that lit up the sky followed by crashing thunder. After about 20 minutes of this, I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t care less about mines.

I kept repeating as much as I could remember of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” to try and take my mind off the freezing cold. I was relieved for about 20 minutes and was able to warm up a bit inside the bridge. Then, back outside. After another 30 minutes, I said to myself, “To hell with this. I don’t give a hoot if we hit a mine; it’s no worse than freezing to death,” and I crouched down behind the bulkhead. Well, we didn’t hit a mine. I completed the watch without being discovered cowering out of the fearsome wind that was shrieking through the rigging and went down to my cot. Even with the Yuma clawing its way up the huge swells, cresting, then sliding down and wallowing through the trough, I managed to sleep like a babe.

When I awoke after sunrise, I was astounded to find that the ship was absolutely motionless. I jumped up, slid into my dungarees and went topside. There I saw a sight that was forever burned into my memory: we were anchored in a small bay, the water was smooth as glass, the beach curved around in front of trees coming down from the volcanic mountain slope in the background, and there was a small fishing village on shore. The sunrise from behind the ship bathed the whole scene in pink and orange hues. It was a spectacular sight that eased the memory of the raging storm we had been through.

While at sea in that sort of weather, the galley is shut down for safety reasons and no hot food is served. Gallon-sized containers of cheddar cheese and peanut butter are put out with soda crackers for the crew ("take all you want"). Of course, everyone was seasick, including Scuttlebutt. We weren’t throwing up because we were not able to eat anything other than the crackers and gourmet spreads. We were lying down almost all of the time that we weren’t at duty stations.

One of my jobs was to keep the huge coffee urn filled with “crankcase drippings.” It was bad because it sat there for hours sloshing around with the movement of the ship. But there were few complaints. That’s when I started using canned milk to dilute the sludge. My recipe: 2/3 cup distilled coal tar, 1/3 cup rancid goat milk, 4 heaping teaspoons of sugar. This will give you the perfect “waker-upper” after a few days at sea in heavy weather.

We searched for several more days and finally, by accident, came across a small barge with a LCVP lashed to it. It was so puny I thought, “Why were we sent out to find this? We lost hundreds of LCVPs during the war, why is this one so important?” We took it under tow and turned back for Yokosuka. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a message from the harbormaster: “USS Yuma: good job, wrong barge.”

Having rescued and delivered the wrong barge, we were ordered to set forth again on our quest just as soon as our radar could be fixed. We left Yokosuka two days later, after repairs and provisioning. The weather was much nicer and we went south, going almost to Okinawa. The temperature was increasingly tropical and the sky was clear. Along the way, we encountered an enormous pack of dolphins that stayed with us for at least a half an hour, keeping our speed as they jumped and dove in great formation, taking turns in peeling off and crossing our bow to scratch their backs, one after another after another. Tiring of the sport, they suddenly took off at high speed and disappeared as quickly as they had come.

Later, in glassy, calm seas, we encountered thousands of Portuguese Man o’War jellyfish. As far as the eye could see, there were humps of clear plastic floating on top of the water. There must have been millions of them.

 After a few languid days of cruising, we spotted a crane on the horizon. As we approached, we could make it out to be a 70-foot tall construction crane mounted on a very sizeable barge. The barge housed a two story barracks and control center. It was completely deserted. We eased up to the side of the barge in order to get a line aboard so that we could secure our steel cable towline to it. Although the sea was relatively calm, the two vessels were both bobbing up and down but not synchronously. I was wrestling a line, trying to get it aboard the barge, when a huge rope fender hanging over the side next to where I was standing suddenly popped and dropped into the sea. The 4” line to which it was attached had snapped, like a weak string, as the barge was moving down and we moved upwards.

It was impossible to get any lines aboard while we were that close. We had to back off and send a small boat to carry our lines to the barge. Once that had been accomplished, we boarded and the foraging began. Some of my larcenous shipmates went into the barracks structure and pawed through the belongings of the Army men who had been stationed on the barge. It was obvious that the vessel had been abandoned in great haste: tools, utensils, and gear of all sorts, as well as clothing, were strewn throughout. A few of our folks thought it would be appropriate to have some Army uniforms as souvenirs. They claimed them under “rules of salvage on the high seas.” Grand talk for simple theft. Our deck officer, however, ordered them to return the booty.

We towed the crane back to Tokyo Bay. This time it was the right barge. Our skipper decided that he wanted to determine if the tow ship had deliberately cut the original tow cable, or if it had parted during a typhoon, as reported by the Army. We deckhands were ordered to pull up the 3” steel cable dangling from the barge. We hauled it up, hand over hand, and coiled it on the Yuma’s fantail. It was a lengthy cable, weighed a ton, and the last many yards had been dragged through the slimy sewage sludge, accumulated over the centuries, from the bottom of Tokyo Bay. When the broken end emerged, the skipper inspected it, declared it broken, not cut. He then told us filthy, stinking, exhausted “deck apes” to throw it back into the bay. What a waste of energy!

Tokyo Bay was crowded with U.S. naval ships as well as many Japanese vessels that were damaged to some degree or another, some severely but still afloat. One of them was a battleship that had suffered extensive damage to the superstructure but still afloat.
 

Japanese battleship, Tokyo Bay, 1946

Frisbie

One of the Yuma “parolees,” Frisbie, became a friend of sorts. Frisbie was only about five feet six inches in height, bullet headed, with a powerful torso and arms like Popeye’s, which made him seem much larger than he was. He had beady little eyes that drilled into you when he was expressing an opinion or asking a question that demanded a specific answer. His eyes also had a maniacal glint when he was angry or incited.

I got to know him while peeling potatoes. Both of us were cunning fellows who decided that peeling spuds was a lot better than chipping endless decaying paint on hands and knees. At least we could sit on stools as we did our duty. So we volunteered for KP and spent hours “chewing the fat.”

Frisbie was not a bright fellow in an academic sense but he was innately keen and ungrammatically articulate. He told many interesting stories about his life and times, prison experiences and could carry on a relatively intelligent conversation. He had been sentenced to five years at hard labor in Portsmouth, the Navy’s toughest maximum security penal institution, for desertion after being AWOL twice.

Frisbie had been put on a work detail to load ammunition for the cruiser on which he was a new crewmember. After many hours of heavy and dangerous work he decided he didn’t want to go to war anymore and he walked away.

A few months later, he was apprehended, tried and convicted. At Portsmouth he worked twelve hours a day. After breakfast at 0600, he and fellow prisoners were marched to the main yard where there were two huge piles of rocks. One consisted of large boulders and the other pile had small rocks. Frisbie’s assignment was to trot with a wheelbarrow from the area where others were breaking the big rocks with sledgehammers and fill his barrow, then go up a ramp and dump the load on the pile of smaller rocks, trot down the ramp, and repeat the process until lunch. Lunch consisted of “piss and punk” (bread and water) and lasted 30 minutes. Then back to the backbreaking work until 1830 and dinner.

The line up for dinner was similar to mealtime at USAF OCS (I went through that experience several years later but that’s another story) for the underclassmen: stand at rigid parade rest, eyes locked on the back of the head of the man in front of you, come to attention and move forward, back to parade rest, etc.

Marines patrolled the line with truncheons and dealt harshly and quickly with any deviant behavior. No conversation was allowed. The menu was simple and “nourishing.” This was the daily schedule with some time off on Sunday. The regimen never varied.

There were a number of former officers incarcerated there, Frisbie told me, most of them having been Supply officers. Their crimes generally were embezzlement or “misappropriation of funds.” They, too, served at hard labor.

One of the more interesting stories Frisbie told concerned a former chief boatswains mate who had been convicted on multiple charges.

He served on a fleet oiler, a rather ungainly vessel with a crew of two commissioned officers, one chief petty officer and about twenty enlisted men. The ship was accompanying a group of armed naval ships when a battle with the Japanese unexpectedly occurred.

In the melee a stray shell hit the oiler. No significant physical damage was done to the ship except for the bridge. Both commissioned officers were killed immediately and the Chief, now the ranking officer, assumed command. His first order was to execute a U turn and leave the area at top speed.

In the confusion of battle, the U.S. flotilla moved in the opposite direction. With unlimited fuel and sufficient provisions, the oiler proceeded across the Pacific in an easterly direction. The Chief formulated his own plan and found the Panama Canal, conned his way through and proceeded north to the Eastern shore of the continental US.

Upon reaching Norfolk, Virginia he again successfully talked the harbormaster into allowing the ship to enter the port. He docked the ship as directed, called the crew together, told them that they were being granted leaves of absence, and that they could depart for home to await further orders. He then gathered his belongings and left the ship, not to be seen again until his apprehension several months later.

He was sentenced to 20 years to life, but he was a hero to the other convicts at Portsmouth.

Frisbie swore that this was a true story. Could anyone have invented such an improbable scenario? Well, Frisbie, maybe, could have. But it’s a good sea story anyway, true or not.

There were many other stories of antiheroism recounted by Frisbie. I went on liberty with him a few times but when he got tanked up he became surly, aggressive and unmanageable, so I left him to his own devices and moved on.

On one occasion, when we came back from liberty and eased into our bunks (Frisbie was in the bunk immediately above me) he suddenly awoke and leaned over and puked directly into my work boots. I woke up and said, "Damn it, Frisbie, clean up my boots!" He groaned and said, "Clean ‘em up yourself," and turned over in his sack. By this time, I was fully awake, if not yet sober, and thought about my demand a little more clearly. I got up and cleaned out the boots myself. Frisbie was a sort of likable guy but I had seen him in anger and I didn’t think I wanted to have it directed at me.

He was, however, one of those unforgettable characters we all encounter sometime in our lives.

Japan as a Conquered Nation

Japan was a thoroughly defeated nation by the time WW II ended. Not only were several major cities of the homeland destroyed, every Japanese civilian that I was able to converse with had lost at least one member of their immediate family to combat or to the bombing of Japan.

The decision to drop the A-bomb on populated areas has been the topic of much second-guessing over the past 60 years. Many people now argue that the U.S. should not have been the first nation to use the cataclysmic weapon, but that position seems out of tune with the reality of the situation in 1945. Japan was already beaten by early 1945, but the military controlled the government and they were adamant about continuing the war. Emperor Hirohito had sided with the military and against the civilian minority in the government structure during the years leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 The details of efforts by the Japanese to propose surrender in the last few weeks prior to the bombing of Hiroshima in early August 1945, are still murky. It was speculated that the emperor had decided to go along with the civilians in the governing circles, and that overtures for a surrender were underway through a third party nation. Some claim that these efforts were ignored by the U.S. Whatever the truth, President Truman made the decision to drop the bomb unannounced for two reasons: it was not a certainty that the bomb would actually detonate and, secondly, to try to bring the war to a quick conclusion with an “unconditional” surrender.  At the time, the U.S. military allegedly estimated that there would be about one million casualties as a consequence of having to invade the Japanese home islands. Additionally, there would have been many more times that number of Japanese casualties. For these reasons, presumably, Truman gave the go ahead. While the results were horrific to the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the strategy worked. The war ended very quickly after the U.S. modified its “unconditional surrender” stance by allowing the emperor to remain on the throne if he would renounce his “Sun God” status. He agreed to the terms.

Whereas Japan was a defeated nation in every way, it seemed clear to me that they could have waged a suicidal defense of the homeland that would have been extremely destructive to any invaders. The topography of Japan, mountainous and honeycombed with underground facilities in strategic areas, would have made a stout defense very possible. I was one of the many among the occupying forces to be thankful that we had been spared from being an invading army.

The civilian population appeared to be cowed, exhausted and subservient to the occupation forces, but the demobilized Japanese soldiers were numerous, sullen and dangerous. They wandered around in their frayed and dirty uniforms, pissing in the gutters, searching for food and an easy victim among the Allied military. Every week the official military publication for forces in Japan, Stars and Stripes, reported the number of our troops killed or injured by roving bands of Japanese ex-soldiers. It averaged about 20-30 deaths each week, at least while I was there. Consequently, almost everything and everyplace was “off limits” to us and we were constantly reminded to be careful and travel in groups, never alone. Of course, the number of casualties was not persuasive to most of us because we didn’t know those people and, as is human, never thought it would happen to us.

Black Market Enterprise

We enlisted sailors had to pass through  marine guards who patted us down for contraband when we went ashore on liberty. The primary item the marines were looking for were extra cigarettes. We were allowed two full packs; anything more than that was confiscated and the smuggler “put on report,” to be dealt with by his commanding officer. Officers, of course, were not subjected to search and could carry ashore as many cartons of cigarettes as they could stuff into an overnight bag.

A pack of cigarettes was worth 15 yen (US$1.00 at that time on the official exchange rate) and cost us five cents, so the profit was 95 cents per pack sold. The profit margin was too great to inhibit some of us. I always went ashore with one pack stuffed in each shoe under my heels. That made me an inch taller, walking like John Wayne, until I could remove them when well away from the Fleet Landing, and out of sight of the hawk eye jug heads. I also could hide another four packs in a pocket I had fashioned in the small of the back of my pea coat. When we were patted down, we were instructed to clasp our hands behind us under our pea coats and the marines just searched the legs and torso, not the lining of the coat. It was chancy, but it left me with 7 packs to sell and one to smoke, providing a princely sum (7x 15= 105 yen) to buy beer, food and souvenirs while ashore.

The troops, and most of the officers, did not view selling cigarettes as being immoral. It was seen more as being an act of Yankee enterprise with a bit of danger thrown in to make it a game. Japanese smokers were delighted to participate and obtain some decent American cigarettes. We didn’t deal out in the open, so we had to ask the prospective customer passing by, “Cigaretto, Joe?” “Joe” would nod and we would slink into an alley or doorway and conclude the sale. The price was always 15 yen, as if established by the government, but actually it was the ‘free market’ that determined the price. The Joes would not pay more than that.

I never had any moralistic issue with this illicit trade. Being a smoker at that time, I could identify with their tobacco addiction and rationalized that I was only filling a “need,” just like the corner grocery store in the States. The end result was that I never had to draw any pay during my stay in Japan.

Bringing in the Sheaves

One of our tasks was to salvage a hoard of silver bullion that the Bank of Tokyo had dumped in the bay prior to the surrender. The location was pinpointed by one of the bank’s officers and all we had to do was move to the site and send Pete, the diver, down to bring it up. It proved to be one of his easiest assignments. When he found the silver, it was stashed in a cargo net. All he had to do was to bring the corners together and attach them to a cable. We then raised the cargo net and put the bullion on Yuma’s fantail, which sank about 3 feet under the weight, while the bow rose accordingly. Thirteen million U.S. dollars of silver ingots spilling out onto our deck! Alas, no souvenirs were distributed and we were closely monitored as we off loaded the treasure into military police trucks for delivery back to the bank.

Adventures While Ashore in Japan

The initial Army unit that landed in Japan, even before the formal surrender ceremonies, was the First Cavalry Division. They set up the constabulary for the occupation forces, manning a number of posts strategically located in the general Tokyo area.

Not the least of the services provided were the prophylactic facilities (“pro stations”) they established, usually close to the “geisha houses,” or bordellos, as we would call them. These houses were not “off limits” for the most part as they were regulated and inspected by Japanese medical personnel. I don’t mean to dwell on this subject but, at that time, Japanese farm families were still routinely selling their daughters at age 12 or 13 to the “sex slave” trade. That didn’t change until a few years later when women were first elected to the parliament. So, in some respects, Japan was still a feudal society in 1946.

Liberty! “Free at last!”

When we were granted liberty, we could leave the ship after 1300 and were to report back no later than 1800 the next day. The only way to get around was by train, and we would cram ourselves into the trains running up and down the main island. Invariably, they were jam-packed full of Japanese going to their jobs and occupation forces looking for adventure. Most Americans were at least a foot taller than the Japanese. We could easily keep an eye on each other no matter where we were in the railcar. I thought, more than once, how simple it would be for someone to slip a knife into one of us, as we stood crammed between the bodies of the indigenous people. However, nothing untoward ever happened to my shipmates or to me.

On one liberty, I went to Tokyo by train and decided to return to Yokosuka by hitch hiking. A marine sergeant, who drove the road often, gave me a ride. It was the first long ride I had ever had in a Jeep. The distance was probably 40 miles or so, with frequent detours around bomb craters and other distractions of the highway. The sergeant had stamped a few “kills” on the driver’s side of the jeep. Apparently, he had hit two pedestrians, three bicycles and one draft animal that didn’t get out of his way fast enough.

We had quite a thrilling drive that took more than an hour but seemed much longer to me. Jeeps, of course, didn’t have shock absorbers or seat belts. I was hanging on for dear life as my new marine buddy careened down the highway looking for new prey. I was delighted to get out when we finally arrived at the Fleet Landing.

Cumby

On one liberty I was invited to join a group of a few “old salts” from the Yuma. This was a compliment as it meant that I was an accepted shipmate, even if I was a greenhorn.

After several hours of wandering from place to place and downing Japanese beer at every stop, four of us ended up far off limits in a relatively nice residential area of Tokyo.

As we staggered down the road, whooping and hollering, Cumby became angered for some unknown reason. Suddenly, he hauled off and smashed his fist into a fence covered with vines.

Cumby was a Boatswains Mate 1/c, a Jimmy Cagney-type, cocky little guy with big biceps and a perpetual attitude. He had his blond hair cut in a close cropped way and he was a nice looking fellow. He looked like a marine, he talked like a marine, he acted like a marine and I never figured out why he wasn’t a marine. He was as fast with his fists as he was with his mouth. He didn’t hesitate to strike a sailor if he felt the miscreant wasn’t doing his job fast enough. Nobody ever turned him in because (1) he was respected and (2) revenge would have been swift.

Anyway, why he struck the fence was a mystery, but the fence turned out to be split bamboo. His fist came back a bloody mess. This had a sobering effect on all of us. We had no first aid equipment of any sort other than the handkerchiefs a couple of us had stuck in one of our few pockets.

We started searching for some help, but who was going to help these four drunken American occupiers with blood all over one of them? I spotted a small wooden marker with a caduceus symbol in the front yard of a house and told Cumby, “Let’s go to the door. I think this may be a doctor.”

We knocked loudly and, finally, a tall, at least 6’2,” nice looking man in his thirties, in full Japanese Army uniform, opened the door. He looked us over very carefully, but fearfully. He was the tallest Japanese I had ever encountered. He immediately saw that Cumby had a severe injury and he opened the door to us.

The entry room was fairly spacious, minimally furnished.  His wife was seated on a chair with their infant child in her arms. I marveled, then and there, that this fellow would trust us not to harm him or his family. His wife was very agitated and scared, but he went to another room and came back with sulfa powder and bandages. He cleaned Cumby’s hand, sprinkled the sulfa on it, and then very carefully bandaged it. He stood up, signaling that we were to leave.

We took out all of the money we had and tried to give it to him. He courteously refused to accept it and firmly gave us a clear body language message that we should leave forthwith, which we did.

I thought about that strange encounter many times afterwards. I had very definite feelings about the brutality of the Japanese toward their enemy. In about 1940, my mother and other members of her club picketed the dock in San Diego where scrap iron was being shipped to Japan to aid their war against China. Some people thought that one day we would see this scrap iron coming back at us, but ‘business is business’ and the profit motive almost always prevails.  I had read about the Rape of Nanking and, later, the Bataan Death March. I had seen some of the freed prisoners of the Japanese: emaciated, skeletal shadows of their normal selves, and those were the lucky ones, who survived that exceedingly cruel experience.

So, my biases were deep and I was surprised that a Japanese would show a little compassion toward his “conquerors.” But, of course, he may have felt that he had little choice.

Exploring the Backwoods

On another liberty with a couple of adventurous shipmates, we took a train eastward to unknown destinations. We passed through many rail yards where scores of burned out hulks of rail cars stood in silent and forlorn testament to the fire bombing of the country. We got off the train in a couple of small villages to test the quality of their beer. As bottles disappeared, the alcohol became increasingly effective in taking us to a higher plane of dim wittedness.

We dared not drink hard liquor in occupied Japan as the alert was out that “Red Heart” whiskey was laced with methyl alcohol, a toxic element that would kill you at worst and blind you at best. This is what sailors traditionally did on liberty to celebrate their freedom from chipping paint or conducting “clean sweep down(s), fore and aft,” but we weren’t totally stupid.

In the late afternoon, we decided that it would be a great idea to take a train into the mountains and go as far as it would take us. We reached the end of the line after about an hour of viewing the beautiful scenery through very bleary eyes. We assumed that we could simply stay on the train and return as we had arrived. Much to our befuddled consternation, we were on the last train that afternoon. The next train back would not depart until the next morning.

We got off, knowing that we were far off limits, with no idea about where we could stay the night. Across the tracks was a fairly large building that had probably been a hotel. A large banner proclaimed it to be the headquarters of a U.S. Army MP company.  We stumbled in to throw ourselves on the mercy of the military police. We knew, even in our bleary mental state, that we could be in big trouble, but there was no alternative.

When we entered, there was a huge party in full swing. The MPs were all stoned, they had many young ladies to party and dance with, and we were welcomed like long lost cousins. More beer was pressed upon us as the night disappeared in a fog of jollity and celebration. There were no extra beds available, however, so the MPs graciously housed us in the geisha establishment across the street.

The next morning, amidst the debris and hung-over occupiers of Japan, we were given an Army breakfast. Afterwards, armed guards escorted us to the first train out. We were given a parting friendly, but stern, admonition to never show up there again.

The Emperor Has New Clothes

Everywhere one went, every bar and public building, shops, train stations, public toilets, the visage of Gen. Douglas MacArthur was omnipresent. His heroic face overlooked every aspect of normal life. He was not a very popular figure among the military at the time, particularly the Navy and U.S. Marine personnel. He was known among us non-combatants as “Dug out Doug,” a pejorative nickname applied after his ordered departure from the Philippines before it fell. To the Japanese, however, he visibly and emotionally replaced the emperor, the former Sun God. They revered Gen. MacArthur, This fit well with his frosty and remote, but competent, persona. It turned out, over time, that he was a very wise and successful choice to be the viceroy to oversee the reconstitution of a proud but beaten nation.

A few years later, when he commanded the forces in Korea, his reputation would once again be forever changed, both for the better and the worse.

Target Practice

Shortly before the Yuma was ordered to set forth for Pearl Harbor to undergo scheduled dry-dock maintenance, we were sent to Sasebo, a major Japanese naval base. It is located northwest of Nagasaki, on the island of Kyushu. Our assignment was to hook up Japanese submarines and tow them out to sea to be used for target practice. I was impressed with the facilities at Sasebo in that they appeared to have suffered little significant damage. We didn’t go ashore so maybe my observations were not accurate but I remember thinking that it seemed that the obvious destruction of Japan was in major population centers where the civilians would be most affected.

We towed the subs out to sea, trailing them far behind us while the gun crews of a couple of destroyers had fun blasting them to pieces.

I was a member of the 3” gun crew on the Yuma and we had our chance to fire away later after the other ships left the scene. Sort of fun but hard on the eardrums.

Shortly after this we were ordered to go to Pearl and to tow a barracks ship to that destination. That type “ship” was a barracks building housed on a concrete hull. Many of them had been towed across the Pacific to house sailors assigned to shore duties in Japan.

Across the Mighty Pacific

There were 200 sailors stuffed into that ungainly ship, which flew the “homeward bound” pennant. I’m sure that they were delighted to be on ANY ship going home, but we were only two days out of Japan when we encountered the edge of a violent typhoon. We tried to avoid it but the storm caught up with our slow moving ship and we wallowed through it for about thirty-six hours. The swells were up to 50-60 feet or more. We had great difficulty maintaining headway for several days and our crew was severely incapacitated.

There is great unspoken apprehension as the ship struggles to work its way up the great wall of water, pausing momentarily at the crest and then, with a sickening lurch, shooting down the steep canyon between the peaks of dark grey water. We wondered if this roller coaster ride would ever end. But I also thought about those poor bastards being jerked around on our taut towline several hundred feet behind us in that concrete-bottomed vessel. It had to be the most miserable, sometimes terrifying, journey of their lives. I really don’t know how they stayed afloat, let alone maintained law and order, but no one jumped overboard to our knowledge.

Our average speed for the trip was about 6 knots per hour, but there were some days when we could barely average 3 knots. I have no idea what the lads on the line behind us had to eat or what they did for entertainment. On the Yuma we had a few movies that were shown several times over. The most popular one featured Guy Lombardo’s band and included some jitterbugging dancers with the ladies swirling their skirts as they maneuvered through their intricate steps. When one of them had her skirt spinning around up to her waistline the movie was stopped as the crew whistled and hollered their approval. After about three showings of this during the first two weeks at sea, one of the officers confiscated the movie and locked it in his quarters. The boys groused about “censorship” for a few days but then began looking forward, anticipating the imagined joys awaiting them in Hawaii.

Land ho!

Twenty-two days after leaving Japan we sighted French Frigate Shoals, the barren rocks poking up above the surface of the Pacific. After a couple more tantalizing days we sighted Oahu. The sub nets had been raised by the time we arrived offshore. We had to motor back and forth within sight of the imagined delights of the island all night long. Finally, the next morning we made our entry into Pearl Harbor.

After we dropped off the barracks ship in Honolulu harbor we moved to a docking assignment immediately in front of the German pocket battleship, the Prinz Eugen. It had been towed across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and on to Hawaii. It, also, was on the way to Bikini to join the other guinea pig ships to be sacrificed in the Bikini atomic weapon tests.

Prinz Eugen being docked in Honolulu, 1946

Liberty on Oahu

Oahu was a beautiful tropical paradise in those days, away from Pearl Harbor. The roads were straightforward, two-lane and sort of crowded, but nothing like today. When given the opportunity, I headed for Waikiki Beach to see the world-famed surfing beach. I was greatly surprised to find a craggy reef without a grain of sand on it. A tsunami wave that had devastated Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii recently, had continued its journey across the Pacific and wiped out Waikiki Beach as it traveled eastward. That was when I learned that Waikiki was not a natural sand beach. All the sand had to be trucked in from time to time, depending upon tidal action.

In 1946, Honolulu was still a funky little town replete with tattoo parlors, whorehouses, bars and barbershops, the sort of business enterprises that sailors would support. During the heighth of the war, servicemen lined up for blocks, patiently waiting their turn to experience micro second gratification with the young ladies providing services. Honolulu had a widely known reputation for the base pleasures provided. There were rumors that some of the ladies retired early, having earned substantial nest eggs.

I took a lot of both legal and unauthorized tours around the Oahu, wherever public transportation could take me within the limited free time that I was able to finagle or steal. The Yuma was in dry dock, there wasn’t much for the crew to do, but liberty was still highly controlled. However, there was a way to get off the base by getting on a Navy bus going to the Submarine Base. Once there you could pull out your concealed neckerchief, put it on and catch a municipal bus to go to Waikiki without going through the marine guarded gate.

In 1946, much of the housing was a classical Pacific island architectural style: wood frame construction with tarpaper or, often, palm frond-covered sides and topped with a corrugated tin roof. There wasn’t any air conditioning other than that provided by the trade winds passing through the open windows and doors. It was delightful, the way I thought the tropics should be. Just hang up a hammock and think about what you’re going to have for dinner at sundown, let the warm soft breeze carry you off to sweet dreams about hula dancing wahines taking you with them to romantic hideaways on the beach. Yes, these were dreams, but the perfumed air and wafted breezes conjured them and they seemed almost possible. Un-air conditioned tropics will do that.

The locals did NOT like sailors. They had barely tolerated the boorish and drunken behavior of we swabbies for many decades prior to and during the war. We were not particularly welcome on the streets but the bar owners were delighted to take our money for watered-down drinks.

The direction came down the command tree of the Yuma that we should plan for a ship’s party somewhere ashore. Scouting parties were sent forth to find the "right" place and make arrangements. The old hands took care of that and, on the evening of the grand event, all those not assigned duty that night were given instructions where the party was to be held. We were informed that there would be food and females to join us but we had to provide our own beverages.

Frisbie and I went forth to buy whiskey for our use that night. Each of us bought a fifth of bourbon and carried it with us to the party place. It turned out to be difficult to find because there were no signs, it was just a big Hawaiian hut with a tin roof. Inside, however, there was plenty of room to have dinner and, afterward, a dance or two with the ladies. Arrangements had been made to have several WAVEs (women Navy personnel) and some local girls join us for the festivities. It soon became very clear that the locals did not like having the WAVEs in the mix.

As the drinking became pretty heavy before dinner was served, the party began to take on a somewhat hostile atmosphere. I wasn’t paying much attention, but some of my shipmates began to make grumbling noises. I think it had to do with the distribution and the seating of our female guests.

Dinner was steak and all the trimmings. Not many of us actually ate much or, at least, we had little recollection of it. As the plates were cleared away, the drinking really became a very serious activity. Then, I believe, the music started and there was to be dancing for anyone who could stand up. That’s when the trouble started.

Suddenly, the WAVEs and the wahines got into a down and dirty brawl. Their combat was serious stuff and some of the more sober shipmates tried to break it up. I went to the head. The facility seemed very busy and one guy, sitting on a toilet, dropped his cigarette or lighter or somehow had his white trousers smoldering so we threw water on him and picked him up. He was dead drunk, out cold.

When I ventured back to our festive gathering, all hell had broken out. The battle surged back and forth and the evening appeared to be progressing to a violent end. People were on the floor amid the debris of broken bottles and glasses. The waiters had fled and chaos reigned. I headed for the door and worked my way through the combatants, arriving outside unharmed, but a bit disoriented. I found a large tree stump and laid down on it to collect my thoughts and contemplate the starlit heavens of the tropics. Sometime later, I awakened to find that I was one of very few left in the area.

We survivors gathered together and formed a mutual aid society by putting our arms around each other’s neck or waists. That way, all would be able to support each other as we stumbled to the pier where our liberty boat was to pick us up.

Somehow we made it. We poured ourselves into the boat when it arrived. It was already loaded with sailors in their soiled, bloodied and torn dress white uniforms, but we were able to fall upon them. No one even grunted. Looking at the rest of the passengers, I concluded that I must be the most sober guy aboard. I was the only one that seemed to be aware of his surroundings, other than the very sober coxswain driving the boat.

That was the last ship’s party to be held in my tenure aboard the USS Yuma. Complaints about damages and disruption in the neighborhood of our party site came filtering in to the Yuma’s skipper. He duly chewed out the entire ship’s crew for embarrassing the president, the American people and disgracing the entire Pacific fleet. He got over it eventually and remained in his cabin working crossword puzzles with the assistance of his roommate, Mr. Jim Beam.

The Ketchup Incident

After the Yuma had been moved out of dry-dock, the ship was put back together and cleaned up, fore and aft. The skipper decided that it was time to have a “white glove” inspection. All of the crewmembers were given specific assignments to prepare their stations for this momentous event. My assigned station was the coffee urn and the zinc shelf to which it was bolted. The urn probably hadn’t been completely polished for months, but it was stainless steel and easy to make sparkling with some plain soap and elbow grease. The zinc shelf was a very different matter, however. It was about five feet in length and had a two-inch lip to prevent whatever was placed on it from falling to the deck in heavy seas. This was where the gallon-sized tubs of peanut butter and cheddar cheese were placed, along with crackers, to feed the crew during stormy weather.

The zinc table was black with indelible coffee stains. No amount of scrubbing made a dent in the hardy discoloration. Because I was a college boy who had taken courses through organic chemistry, it occurred to me that some sort of acid might clean up the stains. What to use? Oh, yes, ketchup is tomato-based and tomatoes have acetic acid. “Click!” went my brain.  I got a bottle of ketchup and poured a small amount on the shelf and let it sit for a few minutes. Voila! The zinc reacted as hoped and the spot was brilliantly revealed, like new. I then poured out about a half-bottle of ketchup, spread it around and let it sit for about five minutes. Next, I wiped the shelf down and the acrid odor was pungent but the result was outstanding. I cleaned up the table completely and returned the ketchup bottle to the galley.

When the inspection commenced, we all stood by our assigned stations at parade rest until the skipper came into our area. At that moment, we were ordered, “’ten-shun!” at which point we snapped to a position of rigid attention. When the skipper and his retinue of ship’s officers came to my position the skipper glanced at the zinc shelf as he passed. He did a double take, stopped, and peered at the shelf.

“Did you clean this, sailor?”

“Yes, sir!” I responded brightly.

“I’ve never seen this shelf so clean. How did you do that?”

“I used some ketchup, sir.”

“Ketchup? KETCHUP! You used ketchup? Do you know that the taxpayers are paying for that ketchup, sailor?” he thundered.

I was struck dumb! I had no response whatsoever. It had never occurred to me that a half-bottle of ketchup was such an expensive commodity that taxpayers would resent the U.S. Navy using it to clean a shelf rather than slather on a pile of GI food.

All I could muster was a feeble, “Yes, sir!” as the skipper and his entourage wheeled off to find more fault with the enlisted lads.

I thought about that most strange encounter many times. Could this alcoholic mariner possibly be serious? No, I thought, he just had to find a victim that day upon whom to vent his righteous naval fury, to show the crew that he was in charge, by God!

Well, so much for ingenuity and brilliant chemical analysis.

Sometime before I received my orders to report for processing and return to California for discharge from U.S. Navy service, the skipper sought me out to encourage me to reenlist. I listened to his sales pitch without any of it registering. When he ran out of breath, I declined the splendid opportunity. He was, understandably, disappointed.

Post Script

I learned a lot in my time in the U.S. Navy, much that I didn’t like at the time, but much more that had an influence on my understanding of the immense, sometimes terrifying, power of the vast ocean. Also, it gave me a better understanding of the nature of human beings, both commissioned officers and the rest of us.