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because some of his friends did. He had taken a little instruction and made one flight in a dual place plane with an instructor. The war had ended before he could exercise his newly acquired skill. He was a very friendly guy with a perpetual smile and he seemed to really enjoy life. If he is still living I'll bet that he is still smiling!

Our barracks as I had mentioned before was a large single story building that had been a cavalry rifle factory. One of the guys who had come up from the islands had a cot next to a wall and fairly near to me. He had a monkey that he wanted to take back to the States when he went home. The monkey was chained to a perch above his cot. One night I heard water splattering. I grabbed my flashlight and traced a stream from the monkey to the cot. So that's why the guy always put his raincoat on his cot!

During the first week of June 1946 the Red Arrow Division was transferred to our unit in the Army Air Corps at Fukuoka. They moved into our barracks during the night. They rolled up in blankets to sleep on the floor between our cots. The next morning as I was heading for breakfast, stepping over the guys on the floor, I straddled one guy who looked familiar. It was Paul Anders who had been my classmate and neighbor when I lived on a farm in Washington Township during the 8th grade. I woke him up and he said that John North, my old "Gold Dust Twin" and gradeschool friend at McLellan School was in the hospital in Fukuoka. John was stationed at Kokura. Acting as bartender, a bottle broke lacerating his right hand and cut the tendon to his thumb. He had spent several hours in surgery that night to reattach the tendon. We checked out a 4x4 and visited him in the hospital. I set up a camera and had a nurse take a picture of us for the newspaper back home.

Our shower facilities at the base were less than adequate. Sometimes there was warm water if you were first in line, but most of the time the water was cold, not fun in winter weather. Down the street was the laundry which was operated by Japanese women. Three of us got a tip that there was a hot tub in the building, accessible through the Japanese maintenance man. We went to see him in the boiler room and he made us a deal: for two cigarettes each we could use the tub. We were to keep it secret. Only a few of our friends had known about it and were using it. When we went for our bath he would move a ladder over to a concrete block wall which had a small sliding door about eight feet above the floor. On the other side of the wall was a ladder attached to the wall. Once we were inside the man would move the ladder. The room was small with no doors or windows and was illuminated by a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The floor was concrete which sloped to a drain. The wooden tub was about three and one-half feet high and perhaps five feet wide and six feet long. There was a wooden seat at each end, an inlet for water which flowed continuously, an overflow pipe about neck high, and steam pipes on the side wall with a control valve. The MO was to splash water on ourselves, soap up,

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