12/27/1941

Honolulu
Dec 27 1941

Dear Ralph;

I notice that you got a lot to write about after all those short notes you used to scrible. Well I guess after coming into a country so different from that you’ve been used to you ought to have plenty to write about.

I don’t think any city in France or Italy I’ve been in was as battered as Tokyo nor were they made of wood & bamboo & could stand more beating & almost impossible to burn. Maybe some of those cities in Germany were just as bad.

The worst I been in was Naples & as you say food, candy & cigarettes counted
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the most & women were cheap & very plentyful.

Maybe your new & haven’t been through much so you got a lot of pity for the Natives. Thought I used to feel sorry for them over there my emotions didn’t quite come to the point where I pitied them & we very seldom gave away anything unless it was for a bargain.

As usual the black market will fluorish in places like that but Japan was never noted as being a well to do country so there probably won’t be much inflated money floating around like in Europe where the Germans manufactured franc & lives.

Yes you’ll find PX stuff all rationed for who wouldn’t want to get hold of couple dozens
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ration tickets for themself.

Since there aren’t many buildings left in Tokyo I wonder were all the GI’s take their dames. Maybe it was like in Italy were they brought the dames up to their pup tents & they used to do it all over the grape vines & forests.

The GI’s always did have a way of getting along with foreign girls even if they couldn’t understand each other & she probably will be hearing a lot of “baby” love talk the GI dish out. Maybe in couple of month they’ll pick some of the GI brand of English like they did on the other side & it’s not something that should
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be spoken in more refined society.

You’ll probably surprise everybody when you get back with the additional Japanese you will aquire while you’re there. You’re bound to for you’ll be trying to learn new words all the time & having a knowledge of it will make it that much easier. I know some of our boys could carry on conversation in Italian pretty fluently just by picking it up. I wasn’t too good at it though.

Charlie & his football team is down here now & he had dinner with us on Xmas. He brought along Kazu & Mame & we had the dinner outside on the unfinished lanai runing
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to Asayo’s house. It wasn’t too bad with the lights hanging from the vine rack above.

My first Xmas at home since the war wasn’t anything much. The eve I went to meet Charlie folks who docked at qoo that night & met quite a number of the home town bunch I didn’t see for a long time like Masao Oshiro, Genchi Senchi Sensiyo & Masa Sata who was just back from overseas. Xmas day was spent preparing for the Dinner.

That’s all,
Brother,
Saburo