Showing posts with label Yokohama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yokohama. Show all posts

Friday, January 2, 2009

Getting to Japan

My sister, Pat, was born in North Carolina, and when she was a few months old, we moved to Salt Lake City. (Actually Mom, a new baby, Terry and Greg rode a train across the country. Mom told stories of a priest who was kind and helped her for a while with her kids. I remember riding the train through the Rocky Mountains.) Dad was going to Japan ahead of us and Mom had family there. We lived in a rental apartment and I started second grade and piano lessons. Then we had our pictures taken for the passport.Then we got on a huge ship, the U.S.S. Breckenridge with a zillion other military families, sailed past Alcatraz, under the Golden Gate Bridge and went to Japan. Greg and I were pretty concerned about Santa Claus finding us, so it must've been December. Mom was seasick for the entire trip so Greg and Pat and I just roamed the ship. Learned to play checkers and saw The Littlest Angel at the kiddie movies.This ship served as a destroyer in the Korean War (Dad flew a lot of missions to Korea) earning four battle stars, after it dropped us off in Yokohama. The Japanese were delighted to see us.