While stationed at his last assignment with the U.S. Marines in Yuma, Arizona in 1960, my father, Robert Gordon Scribner, received his final remote tour duty assignment which was a 9-month tour to a base in Iwakuni, Japan.
Mom & Dad decided to make it a family adventure, and towards the end of Dad’s tour in Iwakuni, we were all headed to Japan to join him. At that time there were four of us children, and we all got passports and a 90-day tourist visa for Japan. We left to join Dad in July of 1961, and we got permission from our local school district to miss the beginning of the next school year for the trip which I suppose was regarded as an alternative educational opportunity – not something easy to get approved in today’s time I would think.
Family was not included on remote military tours of duty, so we waited until near the end of Dad’s tour, and flew over on a commercial airplane. The plan was for us to live “near” the base, we would have weekend trips, and Dad would use some of his vacation at times for us to explore Japan.
We rented a small traditional Japanese house not far from the Iwakuni air base that was located between several rice fields. The house was owned by a Japanese artist that lived next door. Dad would ride to work on a small motorcycle each day. The rooms in our Japanese house were divided with sliding doors with traditional rice paper panels, the floors had rush mats, and we always took off our shoes at the door and wore slippers inside the house. We slept on tatami mats that were rolled up during the day. And we often found lizards or salamanders in the small bathroom that had a shower.
In the mornings there was a lady that we called Mamasan that would bring groceries from the local market and help Mom with the cooking, laundry and housekeeping. We had steamed rice with every meal – and I love rice to this day. We also discovered some wonderful red Japanese candy with rice paper wrappers that would just melt away when popped in your mouth, wrapper and all.
There were local children nearby that we played with – mostly baseball – even though they didn’t speak any English and we didn’t speak any Japanese. I remember that I lost a couple of baby teeth while there, and we must have had a Japanese tooth fairy because I got Japanese coins under my pillow in exchange for my two teeth.
The house was right next to some railroad tracks, and we thought it was so cool to place coins on the track and then the train would flatten them out when it rolled over them. Surely our parents never realized that we were doing that!
In his later years, Dad had written down some stories about our time in Japan, and I will share them here:
“Our house had a bathroom that was two steps down from the bedroom, and it sprung a leak in one of the water pipes. We told the landlord, so he sent his father over to fix it; only the father hooked up the hot water to the toilet. I told the landlord that you still got your feet wet when you stepped into the bathroom and the toilet had hot water in it. So, over came Papasan again to fix it. He spent most of the day in the bathroom and proudly came out and bowed that he was finished. He did get cold water again in the toilet, and he fixed the leak by building a wooden platform so we would not get our feet wet.”
While in Japan, we traveled a lot by train, and I still love the rhythm of riding trains. However, Dad also purchased a 1949 green Hudson car for $100 and we used it for some of our sightseeing excursions in the next few months. I remember it well because there was only one inside door handle that we had to “pass around” when we needed to get out of the car, and of course, no seatbelts. He sold the car, also for $100, when we left.
More of Dad’s narrative tells about our sightseeing adventures:
“After meeting my family in Tokyo and spending a couple of days there, we boarded a train for Nagoya to visit the pearl farms. The kids got a kick out of seeing the raising, gathering, sorting and selling of the cultured pearl. We went down on the beach to watch the pearl divers (all women) return from gathering pearls. We even enjoyed the sea urchins that they roasted on the beach. From Nagoya, we took the train to Kyoto to visit the city that was never touched by war. We visited all of the shrines and palaces that the city held, and then on to Iwakuni. We spent the first couple of nights at a Japanese Inn because our house was not quite ready for us. Getting used to a Japanese toilet was unique for everyone as it was just a hole in the floor that you had to hit, and it was communal.”
“We took the family up to Hiroshima to see the Peace Museum and warned them of the reception they might receive from the Japanese there. It is a tough museum for children to go through, due to some of the exhibits, but they all came through with flying colors.”
“One time we took a train trip to Beppu to visit the hot springs. Beppu was on the island of Kyushu so it was a long train ride. We arrived at the train station and I told Ann to take care of the kids and board the train, as I would get seats for them. The Japanese are very polite people, except when it comes to the trains, and then they push and shove everyone. The train came into the station and I threw our luggage through a train window and followed it by myself and put luggage on enough seats for our family when about five minutes later along comes Ann and the kids. I knew that was the only way we would all get seats. We arrived at our hotel and for the next few days we all dressed in kimonos for the rest of the stay. The baths at our hotel were not communal so I took the boys and we washed, prior to getting in the big pool, and Jeff could not wait so he dove in and surfaced very red faced because it was so hot. Needless to say all the Japanese men looked in awe at the young boy, beet red.”
At the end of our 90-day visa for Japan, we headed to Hong Kong. Dad took a week of leave and joined us there:
“I flew to Hong Kong and met up with the family at the Mandarin Hotel in Kowloon, Hong Kong. We hired an Amah through the hotel to do some babysitting, and we all enjoyed a week in Hong Kong. The Amah would come in every night to feed and babysit the children while Ann and I went out to dinner and took in the nightlife. One night while Ann and I were having dinner in the hotel and watching an elegant Chinese Opera, we looked up beyond the scenery and there were our kids with the Amah watching the Opera - but they did not have to pay to get in. Amah knew everyone and introduced the kids to all the performers. After a week’s stay I had to leave and fly back to the base at Iwakuni and Ann and the children were due to leave a few hours after me on a plane to Hawaii. I paid Amah and asked her to make sure Ann and the children got to the airport and safely on the plane. Amah insisted on escorting the family right on to the plane and the gate personnel could not keep her off. She told them in Chinese that she had promised her employer she would get them on the plane, and that is what she did.”
I can remember how exciting it was to know that we were illicitly watching that Chinese theater performance. We all had a great time in Hong Kong. Mom even got some lovely clothes made for her while we were there.
Our next stop was Hawaii where we spent a month in temporary base housing at the military base on Oahu. The base is located in a non-public area of Waikiki Beach and it was a child’s dream. The teenage daughter of a family friend would come by each morning and we three older kids would get to spend practically all day in our bathing suits with her playing and swimming at the beach. There was also a lobby area at base housing where there were some lounge chairs equipped with a coin box and a small black & white television mounted on the arm of the chair. You could “purchase” 15 minutes of television time with a quarter. We often checked to see if anyone left without watching all of the television time that they had paid for.
We stayed in Hawaii while Dad wrapped up his tour of duty in Japan, and then he joined us for another couple of weeks in Hawaii before we all headed back to Yuma, Arizona. By then we were well into the fall and had missed a couple of months of school. What a wonderful time this trip was for all of us!
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Notes:
1) In 1973 as a young adult, I was fortunate enough to visit Japan, and I remember recognizing places that I had been to as a child, especially in Kyoto – feeding the deer at Nara Park, a large bronze Buddha in the Tojaiji temple, and a small square hole in one of the pillars on the back side of that temple for children to crawl through where it is believed that they will receive enlightenment and good fortune. It felt like déjà vu many times for me during that trip.
2) One memory that comes to mind with our trip to Japan, is that it was the first time that I ever saw a color television – not in Japan, but in the airport. When we were scooting through the airport we noticed that there were a few color televisions in one waiting area. I think that they were in an area of the lobby that was set aside specifically for television watching. And remember that the color show that was being broadcast at the time was Bonanza. Also, I still have the pearl that I found in my oyster at the pearl farm.
3) For the next several years Dad would show some of the home videos that he took while he was in Japan to our grade school classes when we studied Japan in social studies. His videos showed many of the temples and shrines, the pearl farms, and other scenes of life around Japan.
4) I will be sharing more
blog posts about of my parents and our early family life later this year.
Key Individuals:
Robert Gordon
Scribner (1923 – 2006)
Ann Hart Hughes Scribner (1921 – 2006)
- Jane
Scribner McCrary
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