Tokyo, Sharks and Ice Cream. ( Part 8)

The Aussie personnel were an interesting lot.

They were great gamblers. Large groups of them would be on the upper decks playing a game called “odds and evens”. Three coins were thrown up in the air and the bets would be on how they fell. All heads, all tails or a combination of the two. Guess correctly and you win, guess wrong and you lose. I saw grown men lose all of their pay in just a few hours playing this game!

Amongst the Aussies were a large number of Airmen who had served as Aircrew and had suffered terrible burns when they were shot down. Cosmetic surgery was still in its infancy and many of them had been treated by a particular pioneering plastic surgeon called Archibald McIndoe. Those that were treated by him had formed their own club called the "Guinea Pig Club". They had lost ears, hair and other facial features. I found them quite difficult to look at. Collectively they were known to everyone on the ship as the Guinea Pigs. I often wondered what their loved ones thought when they saw them for the first time.

When we came into Sydney Harbour the first thing I could see was a long line on unbroken cliffs. Not much of a view. But then the ship slowly turned and there it was. What a sight, the beautiful famous harbour with its famous bridge.

Once we has dis- embarked we had a long train journey to our camp, the Golden hind. The scenery all the way there was completely barren. All I kept thinking was “where are all the bloody kangaroos?”

Once there we were put into small groups and given large huts to sleep in. We soon found out why the area we were staying in was called the “Outback”. Theses huts were wooden and draughty. They had a front door and a back door. Every morning someone was given the job of sweeping out about an inch of sand that had blown in during the night. The rule was always the same. Start sweeping from the front and get rid of the sand through the back door. Hence we swept it “Outback”.

After just a few days at the Golden Hind, me and my mate Eric Warner were approached by a Senior Supply Assistant called Mitchell. He was looking for two Supply Assistants who would volunteer to be included in a Naval party to go to Tokyo to open up a Wireless Station in the British Embassy. To this day I don’t know why, but Eric and I did something we had been told NEVER to do. We volunteered!

Within a few hours and before we had a chance to change our minds, we were on a Destroyer Supply Ship called H.M.S. Tyne and bound for Japan. We sailed up past the Barrier Reef and through various groups of Islands. The Pacific is an ocean where there are, at times, violent rain showers and you can see large water spouts on the horizon. We anchored just off an Island and the skipper decided we could all go swimming in shifts. The gangway was lowered with a platform for us to dive off. I dived in and began swimming. It was only then that I noticed the life boats that were being rowed around us. Each boat had a rower and a lookout with a rifle. I asked another of the swimmers what the life boats were for. I can still remember his answer. “Oh, they’re the shark spotters.”

I didn’t swim much after that, just got out of the water as quickly as I could.

We arrived in Yokohama on 23rd December 1945. Our Naval Party was put ashore with all our gear late in the evening. I have to admit to being a bit nervous as I put on my kit bag. We were “Occupational” forces and none of us were sure what reception we would get from the Japanese.

A jeep met us and took us on our journey to Tokyo. It was a forty minute trip and was truly horrendous. The American fleet had been off shore days before the Japanese surrendered and had bombed the hell out of the civilian population. Japanese houses were pretty flimsy buildings and the bombings had flattened everything in sight leaving huge craters in the ground.

However the British embassy was built to withstand an earthquake comparable to the great earthquake of 1926. It was a huge compound, with the main large building at the front, and, in the grounds behind there were many residential buildings, where, in normal times, the staff would live. Our Naval party and some other Aussie personnel would stay in these buildings.

Me, Eric and Bryan took a ground floor room, set up our camp beds and made ourselves at home.

Right across the road from the Embassy was the large moat that surrounded the Emperor’s Palace. The grounds of the Palace were huge as where the Koi- Carp that swam in the moat!

All our food came from the American Army and it was my job to collect it every day. The Americans love their ice-cream and so did I. We ate a lot of ice-cream in Tokyo.

Everyday there would be “earth tremors”. Suddenly you would feel the ground move and light fittings in the ceiling start to swing. Very unnerving at first, but after a few days, we took no notice and carried on as normal.

The Admiralty always commission any Naval establishment as though it were a ship. That’s how the whole system works. There is a Captain at the top and humble naval ratings at the bottom. So the British Embassy became “ H.M.S. Return”. That name was historically very significant because in the seventeenth century when Japan first opened its waters to foreign ships, the first Navy ship to arrive in Japan was “H.M.S. Return”.