Colahan (DD 658) - Naval Cruise Book

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The G-inrei--a Japanese restaurant with the decor of an old German tavern. Our stomachs said noon-our wrist watches said noon. Yet, the trip had only been 50 miles long. lt was true tho, it had taken us 4 hours to travel 50 miles. But, we were finally entering Naga- saki. We had reached the crest of the mountains about l l 230-Ever since we had been slowly dropping down, down into the valley that holds the city. On both sides of the bus, buildings jutted out of the hillside, below us we could see streetcars and paved streets. Our guide explained-this part of the city had not been touched by the bomb. We stopped for lunch in a little Japanese restaurant, deco- rated like an old German tavern. After lunch, our guide told us that before going to the site of the A Bomb damage he would like to show us an old temple that overlooked the city. Going from the restaurant to the temple, Na- gasaki looked like any other Japa- nese city with its narrow streets crowded with people in a mixture of western and oriental dress. Its little shops with their shelves of candy jars filled with dark, leath- Left Page Thirty-eight ery looking dried sea horse and shrimp, next to boxes of Hershey bars and Wrigley's gum. The greens grocer's with his displays of strange looking vegetables and Heinz beans, the hundreds of chil- dren, with their bowl haircuts playing tag, hide 'n seek, spinning tops, or-using up their American vocabulary to yell Hi, as we drove by. This particular street is in Nagasaki. lt could be duplicated however, anywhere in Japan. Some of the first to make the trip . . . to right: Curtiss, Weber, Hastings, Eich- wald, Wittich, Rousseau, Larkin, Mr. Rus- sell, Mr. Craig, Chief Garnett, Mr. Hoff- man, Mr. Shannon. Kneeling: Greenbush, Ferguson, Baxter, McCall, Goerhing.

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a side Trip to Nagasaki . The bus and driver that took us to Nagasaki. Sasebo is only fifty .miles from Na- gasaki, so why not charter a couple of busses for the crew. Quite a few of the fellas have said that they would like to see where they dropped the atom bomb. That sounded like a darn good idea, so the recreation committee chartered busses and drivers for Saturday and Sunday and started getting up a list of the fel- lows interested in going. The bus that met us on the pier must have been one of the company's finest. Outside, it was all silver and blue, inside, there were flowers in silver holders, green leatherette seats, and-dark blue, ball fringed curtains on the windows. As soon as we were all aboard, we began squeezing and honking our way thru the narrow streets of Sasebo. Without hitting anyone, or taking any of these delicate little houses off their foundations as we lum- bered down some particularly nar- row street, our driver fought us thru the traffic and out of Sasebo onto a hard dirt road-the main highway to Nagasaki. Once we had passed the level ground that the city was built on, the road started threading its way thru those steep, terraced hills that we had be- come so familiar with going in and out of Japanese ports. Every so often there would be a square, tile roofed house of rice paper and un- painted wood, with every square inch of ground around it cultivated, green, producing. Sometimes thru the bus'window, you would see a man-a woman, he, with his pants legs rolled up-she, with her kimona hitched up behind her, working bare- footed in the alfmost freezing weather in a flooded rice paddy. The road narrowed to one lane, we often had to stop and pull off the road to let someone pass, or, we would pass someone that had pulled off the road for us. About half way to Nagasaki we passed a construction gang working on a cut for a new road. As men with picks and shovels worked on the sides, smoothing them, women and children with scoop-shaped wicker baskets were loading small track mounted carts with the dirt which was accumulat- ing at the cut's base. And so it was with every turn, every mileewe saw more and more of these strange, backward ways' that we had heard, or read about, but being Americans had never quite believed to be true. panese house, be you in the city, or country. Page Th':'ty-seven 1 i

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Overlooking the temple's main steps, and The main room ofthe temple. the city. The temple was on a hill overlook- ing the city. All around the com- pound that held the main buildings were gardens ot colorful Japanese bushes, shrubs and trees. The main buildings of the temple were of stone darkened by time and wood lustrous from years of polishing. The main room was decorated with brilliant red, green and gold drapes, the polished floor was covered with pale yellow reed mats. ln the center was a kneeler. lt was a quiet, serene scene, yet, you felt the air of de- sertion as you looked around the buildings. Even the Japanese people that were there seemed to have come as spectators-coming as you, to view what had been. Hastings: l wonder it I should take a picture of that. Page Thirty-nine