Swedish Invasion of Occupied Japan

My Dad was 100% Swede, blond, blue-eyed, looked like Alan Ladd, and 3rd generation American. When we were at war with Germany and Japan, he was actively involved as a "spy" pilot in the Army. The first time he saw me was when I was a year old and that was in San Antonio where he was being treated for war fatigue. After we declared war on Japan and won, he reenlisted (after 2 more kids) and was sent to Occupied Japan. His duty time was for several years and so to be a family my Mom and we 3 kids took an ocean liner trip to Japan. We lived there for a little over 3 years and had many adventures. Some of these are memories of a 5-8 year old kid and some are from my younger brother, Chris, who says he remembers but . . .

We moved quite a bit while we were there - you would wonder, since it is such a small country, why we had so many houses. What I do remember is that they were all mansions because we have the photos to prove it. Some of my memories might actually be influenced by these photos. Many of the Japanese who had lived in these houses gave them up to the soldiers who were now protecting them and we lived better than if we were living in the U.S. We had what they called mamasans (housekeepers) and houseboys (they helped the mamasans.) My Mom must have felt in hog heaven.

The first house was 3 stories slanting down a hillside (looking more like a Japanese Frank Lloyd Wright version.) It had 2 levels of yards, the upper being what you would consider a Japanese garden-type rock garden with shaped bushes and different stone statues. The lower portion of the yard was a large grassy area that you took steps down to get there and seemed like several acres. Outside the gate and fence which protected the perimeter of our house was a wide canal that you could only get to the other side by going over a bridge. On the other side were other houses very similar to ours.

The inside of the house was typically Japanese with paper walls and sliding doors (the Swedish invasion poked many holes in those paper walls.) I believe my brother, Victor, was the one most responsible for the holes. After all, he was only almost 2 years old. While we lived there we went through an earthquake where we had to take cover and a typhoon/tidal wave that destroyed anything close to the ocean. Thank goodness, we were far enough inland that it didn't affect us, but we took many pictures of the destruction. I remember at the age of 6 being really scared. My Dad was flying spy missions over North Korea at the time so he wasn't there to protect us. In fact, he spent most of his time in North Korea, so we lived in Japan mostly alone. My Mom was from a small town in East Texas and she must have been very brave and very in love to travel all that distance to be with my Dad.

One of my brothers was born on the Army base while we lived there. I also attended kindergarten and first grade at the Army base. I traveled there by Japanese train (the transportation mode at that time.) I don't remember that we had a car.

My Mom tells a story about being on that train when an enraged Japanese man, still angry at Americans for Hiroshima, went wild. My Mom, blond and beautiful, and we 4 kids, all blond ourselves (we must have looked like something out of the movies), were immediately surrounded by the other Japanese passengers and protected from the man until the police could subdue him.

Our second house was more spectacular than the first. It had such a large yard that there were several pagodas in the yard, surrounded by a moat of water, and you had to cross over a bridge to get into the pagoda. It was quite a fairyland for a young girl of 6 or 7. There were also stone statues placed throughout the grounds. There were many rooms inside of the house that were off-base for us and now I regret not sneaking into some of them. This house was also surrounded by a concrete wall. There was a little door at the back of the house that we kept locked, but when my Mom wanted to take a short cut we would go through that gate and it was like the opposite of "The Secret Garden." We would suddenly be in the midst of Japanese enterprise that you couldn't hear from inside our concrete world. It was in this house that my brother, Chris, swears my Mom and I would sneak out to the movies after she thought the 3 younger kids were asleep. Chris couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 and I have to give him credit for a really good memory and a grudge held for a long time - he didn't get to go. But I say that's the privilege granted for being the oldest.

My Mom took me to the Japanese ballet a couple of times which is very different from what most people in the U.S. are familiar with because they didn't dance on their toes. The stage scenes were very colorful, flamboyant, and surreal. The dancers' costumes were so colorful and glittery and they fought on stage so there was a lot of activity. It was all spoken in Japanese but that didn't matter because it was very exciting.

We had several picnics on a lake at the base of Mt. Fuji and I remember paddling some kind of boat on the lake, probably a canoe of some sort. It is a memory of a lifetime and whether it's through real thoughts or manufactured ones from photos, it was magical. It might explain my current passion for travel and adventure.