Sagamihara Stories and Tales

I remember hay rides in a Army Truck ?

I remember playing the imaginary rope trick across the road and then quickly dispersing when the MP's arrived.

I also remember how the MP's had our names
as troublemakers. How they got our names
I will never know.

I remember putting a dent in the fender of my dad's car and getting it fixed without him knowing about it. (I think)

Good Gosh ! I must remember more than this.

(I do remember something else. Who remembers "Bubbles" the GI who drove the School Bus every once in a while ?)

    I wish I knew what happened to Connie Cohen. She and I spent
quite a bite of time together touring Yokohama and Tokyo and, in
general, being silly trying to learn to smoke, etc. Connie was always
able to get the "smokes" or "ciggies" as we called them. I think my
Dad counted every one of his cigarettes and would know if even one
went missing so getting them from my house was out of the question.
Unfortunately, we tried them just enough to get hooked and was 29
before I was able to kick the habit. What a relief!

     We had a few earthquakes while I was there. One took place shortly
after I arrived and it was during the school day. The drill instructions
from the teachers had been to always stay in the classroom and get
under our desks, table or door jam. I remember getting up off the floor
after the quake was over to find there were no teachers or administrators
around. They had all run to the courtyard!   It was a scary quake even to the
neighboring Japanese and we were able to see them come screaming out
of their homes and scurry around looking for a safe place. This all
happened when we were in the Tagatay Ridge school.

Each year when May 1st rolls around my memories take me back to Japan and our bus rides to school. Because of public demonstrations (Communist) during that month, there was always a military person assigned to ride the bus and protect us. The poor man.. .what terrible duty! We gave him the absolute worst time! We screamed, sang, ran around, smoked and likely instilled in his mind to never have children. I remember one fellow pleading with us to behave and said his "stripes where in our hands". As I recall, we laughed. Of course, I didn't do anything bad; it was the other kids. Ha.