Buck Matthews
Dogpatch Days
Recollections of a Non-Combatant in the Combat Zone
Japan Diary
Tokyo, Japan, Ginza Street, 1952.
“Never have I seen anything to equal the service obtainable in a Japanese barbershop.
For 25c, you not only get a haircut, but a valet hovers nearby with a whiskbroom and leaps into action at the drop of a stray hair onto the sleeve or trousers of the customer! Shoeshines are 5c and for a dollar-and-a-half you can spend an hour in the chair getting everything they have to offer!”
“Finally got to sightsee a little on baggage truck to Tokyo. Sat up in back and peeped out over top on cab and froze to death.
A few times I came near being frightened to death.
Driving in Japan would seem to be a form of Russian Roulette.
The vehicle operators (trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, pushcarts, horse- and ox-drawn wagons) have no fear apparently; they grit their teeth and pass on curves, hills, and safety zones. It must be terribly hard to buy life insurance here.”
“Tokyo is not different from any big city in America at all. Change the street names, the signs on the stores, and disregard the few remaining kimono-clad pedestrians and you would have Washington, Philadelphia, or Atlanta. It abounds with clothing stores, jewelry stores, book shops, drug stores, restaurants, taxicabs, streetcars, and people. Its department stores are large and well-stocked; its hospital facilities are up-to-date; its hotels and night clubs are, like those in the States, good and bad; and its modern, busy railroad station is never without its crowd of commuters.
The Japanese National Railway is even very much akin to our own ill-famed New York Central.”
“Rattling along in the Nipponese Pullman, all the GIs rib the little porter about how hungry we are. Every time he’s walk through the car, we’d stop him and ask for “chop-chop.”
He finally came back with a little box of Japanese caramels and insisted we have some. Later, one of the Aussie medics handed me a package of arrowroot biscuits from his pack, saying he couldn’t stand to see a comrade starve.
When the porter came through again, I asked him to join us in a cookie and he took one, then hurried off with a thnkyuvermuch.”
I almost dropped out of my upper when he came trotting back a minute later with a handful of little paper cups filled with water. He said it was “Japanese whiskey.”
I like these people more every day!”
“The Osaka railroad station looks exactly like the North Philadelphia station back on the mainland.”
“Just before 1400 we stop at a station outside a large camp with white barracks. From the pole at the headquarters building flies the Union Jack. Here we lose our British, Australian, and Canadian friends.”
Hiroshima.
At first glance, it is difficult to tell that only six years ago, this city was totally obliterated in a matter of seconds by a single mechanism employing the smallest obtainable particle of one element. Its railroad station bustles just the same as all the others and the houses resemble all the other millions of Japanese paper houses. If one looks closely, however, it will be noticed that all of these shacks are practically new. The only large buildings are brand new or under construction.
Today, Hiroshima is just another struggling Japanese town – but one day in 1945, this was the most famous, most tragic and pathetic city in the world.”
© Copyright 2008 Buck Matthews. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes without permission in writing from the author. Used with permission by BelleAire Press as a tribute to those American servicemen and women who served during the Korean War.