The mid-fifties was a time when the military bases for the United States Armed Forces were phasing out. After leaving Itami Air Base, we were reassigned to Nagoya, the home base for the Fifth Air Force. Most of the Fifth Air Force had already departed their base and many of the military buildings were vacant. My husband flew helicopters (the large banana-shaped ones) in an Air Sea Rescue squadron.
We arrived in Nagoya and were assigned to housing outside the headquarters’ main base in an area called Smithtown. Smithtown was a small settlement of 21 military families. It was a nice little house that sat right on the edge of a canal. Our main recreation was getting together to play bridge.
We had only been there a few weeks when one night, while playing bridge in our house, there was a terrible rainstorm. We kept eyeing the rising water in the canal, finished our game and went to bed. A few hours later, the dam above the canal broke and flooded the entire area of Smithtown. We were awakened by screams for everyone to get out and stepped out of bed with water up to our knees and things floating around.
Some residents saw their refrigerators floating by. We grabbed the children, got in the car, and got out. Fortunately, all the 21 families escaped without any serious injury and we were taken to one of the empty buildings on base at Fifth Air Force headquarters. We went to bed on the floor. We had nothing with us, not even a toothbrush.
The next day, the water had receded and the men took large trucks and went back to Smithtown to retrieve our belongings, which were all taken to another building and spread out to dry. What a mess it was! But we all pitched in and worked with the water-soaked belongings, drying them out, salvaging what we could. Everyone worked together and I recall wondering where the Red Cross was to assist and at least bring us toothbrushes. It was a lot of work to salvage what we could from so much water damage. However, we survived another disaster in this strange country and we were assigned housing in a prefecture called Gifu, about 20 miles from the main base.
Gifu was a housing area where the higher-ranking officers lived. The houses were quite nice and large, but the streets from the base to the housing area were very narrow and rugged. We had brought our housemaid with us from Itami and she was very helpful, particularly as an interpreter. Our first trip there was to inspect the house and area. The house was left in good, clean condition and there were food and other items left in the kitchen pantry.
We returned to headquarters for a night’s sleep and the next morning our belongings were loaded into a military truck we followed out to Gifu. We parked the car and when we opened the front door, we found that the house had been vandalized overnight. Someone had taken all the food in the pantry and dumped it out in the floor, along with a bottle of ink that was smeared everywhere on the food. I went back to the car, sat down and groaned. The truck drivers and the maid got busy cleaning the mess, which took a couple of hours. Then they started unloading the truck and setting up the furniture.
We did not have a phone, but about halfway through unloading a neighbor came over and said that my husband had a phone call. When he returned, he informed me a C-124 was on the runway, ready to take off, and he was to report for a temporary mission immediately. He grabbed his B-4, bag of clothes and we jumped in the car and I drove him back to the air base. He left for temporary duty and was gone a couple of months.
I drove back to the house with a resolve to pitch in with the maid, unpack and set things up to resume living, and prepare the children to enter the base school. I was determined to survive living in this country, despite all the disastrous happenings. Within a couple of weeks, I had friends from Smithtown come for the weekend . . . we started playing bridge again and went on sight-seeing trips around the area.
One of the highlights of living in Japan was taking the children to watch comorant fishing at night. It was a spectacular sight to watch a dozen or so fishermen coming down the river carrying lights on their heads, holding onto the reins of the large comorant birds diving for the fish. The birds held the fish in their gullets and the fishermen removed the take at the end of the trip.
After a couple of months living in Japan, me and my friends decided to fly to Tokyo, stay at the Imperial Hotel and go shopping. That was a fun thing to do. I had hired a houseboy, so we left the children with the maid and houseboy. When we returned, I asked her what she cooked and she said a meat pie. I asked her where she got the meat and she said she opened a can of it. When she described the can, I realized it was dog meat. But she said it was very good.
My husband returned from his temporary duty assignment and we continued to live in Gifu. About six months later, a very nice house right on base became available. So we moved again . . . to the Fifth Air Force headquarters’ base.
Living there was one of the most enjoyable times since arriving in Japan. We had a large house and did a lot of entertaining with dinners and bridge playing. We frequently invited the bachelor officers over to eat and play bridge. Sometimes they did the cooking. They seemed to enjoy getting out of their bachelor quarters to be with a family and eat good cooking, instead of eating in the mess hall. We had acquired a German Shepherd dog and they also enjoyed playing ball on the lawn with the children and the dog.
Nagoya was a cultural center and had lots of historic sights. We enjoyed visiting the ancient castles and I loved shopping in Nagoya. I bought a lot of china there and had several pieces of furniture made by some great craftsmen in the area. I think we were in the Nagoya area about a year before being reassigned to Tachikawa air force base in Tokyo. We shipped our automobile and flew to Tokyo via a military plane. I did not like flying. After we were air born, the pilot, who was a friend of ours, invited me to come into the cockpit and it was an eerie experience as I looked straight down.
We arrived in Tokyo and again stayed in the Imperial Hotel for several days before moving into a housing development called Grants Heights. I always loved staying in the Imperial Hotel. It was built by Frank Lloyd Wright during the 1920s. It was luxurious and the crossroads of the world. The food was superb. Sitting in the lobby, watching guests dressed in their native costumes coming and going from countries all over the world, was like sitting in a movie. It was also great fun to go shopping in the array of shops in the basement. In the evening, there were many entertaining nightclubs to go partying. One, in particular, was three stories tall with a huge elevator stage at one end where beautiful music played by live orchestras floated up and down . . .
After staying in the Imperial Hotel for a brief period, we moved into a new house in Grant Heights, which was the largest military dependent housing in the world. All branches of the military lived there, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, etc. Our house was just outside the officers’ club building in the middle of the project .
Continued in part 3 . . .
