Letters From the Editor

March 2005! I was just sitting here thinking (yeah, I can still do that), It's been 40 years since I was sitting in a darkened booth in the old White Hat Club in Yokosuka. Yes, I can see the memories gurgling up from the minds of all you old Westpac shipmates.

I've thought about  Masako, my favorite Cherry drink girl over the years, and often wonder what fate had in store for her.

I met her in the White Hat Club on my first liberty in Yokosuka. I went through the door and began looking for familiar faces in the hazy room. Masako materialized out of the smoke, grabbed my arm and asked me to buy her a Cherry drink. What the heck, I was single and had a pocket full of Yen to get rid of, so I agreed and we grabbed a table. I pretty much ignored her the rest of the night as shipmates came in and gathered around for the usual bull session.

Sometime later I vaguely remember  a cab ride through narrow dirt roads and being helped up a set of rickety stairs by a short, black haired girl that smelled like cherry drinks, and her trying to get me to take off my shoes. Thus began my introduction into the life of a Japanese bar girl.

I never knew how old she was, but I do know that she had a few years on me. Hell, she could have been fifty and I wouldn't have known.

She lived in a small studio apartment right on top of her landladies house, and we spent the next day there. Her  values were strictly Japanese and, bar girl or not, she took care of me (excusing the occasional temper tantrum). I stayed with her when I was in port. My obligation was to buy food and cigarettes, an occasionally hamburger from the em club, pay the bartender some money so she wouldn't have to work,... and to dutifully empty my wallet into her greedy hand.

I learned to like Japanese food, and would watch as she prepared entire meals on her small gas heater with a single grill on top.  I was tucked warm and cozy with my legs under a low table covered with a thick cloth that reached to the floor and had a red light bulb underneath that kept your feet and legs all warm and toasty (can't remember what you called that table).

I learned how to go to the local bath house and had lessons on Japanese protocol for bathing correctly. The cost of the bath was a  5 yen piece (remember 360 yen to the dollar). We entered through separate doors (men and women were segregated at the time)but as I stood at the counter to pay and get my basket, I could see right into the women's dressing room...furthering my quest for the study of the female anatomy. The only thing that bothered me about the whole experience was that the counter girl sat with her chin on her arm and stared at me as I undressed...a lesson in gaijin (foreigner) anatomy.

I also learned how to use the dreaded "Benjo!" The toilet was in another room in her house. You had to put on a pair of special sandals and walk down a small hallway into the stinking place. It was never heated, and smelled like... well, like an open sewer, which is pretty much what it was. You stepped up on a platform, lifted the small wooden cover, squatted and well, you know, ...too much information.

She seemed to be a bright woman, but it was hard for me to tell with her minimal English. We spent quiet nights in front of her small black and white TV watching the Andy Williams show (a favorite in Japan at the time), and many, many Samurai movies. Kind of like Gunsmoke with swords.

One night her landlady cooked us dinner. She was a nice traditional Japanese woman, all bows and smiles. She would go to the refrigerator, drop to her knees, open the door, stand up again, walk 2 feet to the table and drop down to her knees again to serve the food. I wonder if anyone still does that?

I remember her saying that she told her mother that she earned her money as a violinist. I don't recall ever seeing one in her house. I wonder if her mother ever learned the truth.

My time with Masako ended abruptly. She had always wanted me to take her to Tokyo. Well, one day I made the mistake of going without her. When I returned and told her where I'd been, she hauled me out of the White Hat club and gave me the stinging, raging, make you feel worthless kind of ass chewing that only a woman can give you. I left, mortified and humiliated, especially because this had taken place with sailors all around us watching and laughing.

It was an experience; one that I will remember always. If I saw her today, she would probably be a poor, toothless old woman with nobody to look after her, but heck, I like to think that she might have married a sub sailor and is living a good life somewhere in America. Maybe even right down the block from me.

Sayonara Masako san!

Pecos

C'mon guys, send in and share your memories and stories. It's easy...really!

Friday Aug. 26th to Tuesday Aug. 30th, 2005
Hyatt Regency Crown Center
2345 McGee, Street. Kansas City, MO - 1-800-233-1234
Our Reunion will overlap USSVI Convention - http://ussvi.org/
USSVI Convention August 29 to Sept. 4, 2005

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KC Crown Center map:

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