Gene in His Element, Exploring Post-war Japan (85)

Maj. Pfile was by nature interested in everything around him.  He liked to explore and learn new things.  We are left to speculate on our own how and why warehouses and offices were left unlocked, for what the machines and chemicals were used, and what niche the many hawks were filling.

Town plan of Wakayama showing where the troops came ashore

17 Oct. '45
Beloved,
     Am I ever getting to be a gad-about!  Yep, off the boat again today!  This morning they started giving the men a few hours on shore.  I drew the afternoon shift.  You know, it is soft being a major!  I had 4 officers who had about 28 men each to look after, while I could go my own way.  They had to stay with the men and try to keep them together, which really was a job with about 20 boats sending in a couple of hundred men each.  We left at 12:30 in an LCM [landing craft mechanized].  We didn't land in the town but at a village in the industrial area.

Partially completed factories at Wakayama

     Really it was the darnedest feeling to walk into the buildings where things had just been left!  The first was about a half a block long and a huge open affair - roof 75 or 100 feet high and it was all one story!  I climbed to the top of an outside traveling crane as high as the building and took some pictures [see photo above and that in post #84].  The inside of the plant hadn't been finished and there was not much machinery in it.  Outside there were some sort of chemical processing towers, huge electric gadgets and motors.  Darn if I know what it was!
     Back of it was a wooden building that housed a chemical lab.  It had 3 large rooms just filled with chemicals and apparatus of various kinds.  And no one was around - not even any "keep out" signs in English!  There was a library in the place of at least a thousand books - US. German and English - all on chemistry.  I looked at all the chemicals, but refrained from rifling the desks!  Practically all bottles had English or Latin labels.  A few had German.  There was even some perfume!  There were 2 pint bottles that I think had rose oil.
     In another building - a sort of office, there was the first complete household shrine I've seen.  I saw several dismantled ones in odd corners of the factory.  They are wooden affairs - plain wood but carefully made.  They are about 18" high and almost that wide.  They are made to look like the front section of a building, roof sweeping down, doors, a sort of porch, fence and steps.  On each side was a blue and white bud vase holding a sprig of pine.  At the side of the "steps" were 2 small porcelain "stone lanterns", shaped just like the man sized ones they have around the shrines.  By them were 2 doll sized saucers with dry rice on them.  On the stops were correspondingly sized cups, probably for some liquid.  Inside the 2 lattice doors were some papers with figures on them - printed, not painted.  Oh you bet I looked around to see no Nip was watching me finger his shrine!  But Honey, you'd have been proud of me!  As much as I wanted to swipe the vases and the "lanterns" for you, I refrained and didn't do it!  Have I reformed!  Besides souvenir hunting in Japan is apt to be labeled looting by the unfeeling M.P.'s!
     Another building manufactured some sort of chemicals and had big vats of sulfur-smelling stuff.  Another place had some huge electrical things.  Of all the places, the chemical plant was the only one which looked as though it had been used.  On the sand dune back of the wide beach there were oil tanks in the making, but they were very rusty.  There were fox holes and trenches all along there and one place for a gun mount.
     It is remarkable how many hawks there are.  I saw at least 6 today and there were that many around the town the other day.  They fly quite low, too.  The dune was overgrown with pine trees and a great many of them had been tapped for pine resin, like rubber trees for catouche [caoutchouc, or natural rubber].  They had a series of gashes with a bit of metal as a gutter at the bottom and pieces of bamboo to catch the gum.  It looked like a mighty slow, slim yield!
     Back at the ship - no news, no mail, no nothing.  Just think, the last news I had from you was way last month.  Confound this inefficient brass!  I wish congress would turn loose on them!