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splash water again to rinse the soap off, climb into the tub and turn the steam on to raise the water temperature. It was wonderful! When we were finished a small tap on the door would bring the Japanese man over with his ladder. The three of us enjoyed the tub for several months and probably hooked the poor guy on cigarettes!

Some of us didn't smoke but we always bought our allotment each month. Sometimes we used them to barter for other things. We would also stuff the spare gasoline can on a Jeep with several cartons of cigarettes and sell them to a certain man on a side street for a very high price. They were willing to pay and we could buy lots of expensive things like kimonos and paintings.

One evening I was walking with Martin Renninger, the old (39) man in our outfit, along the road just outside our base. Soon one of our Japanese interpreters, a man about Martin's age, and his wife came from a side street and joined us. They were on their way to the public bathhouse. He asked us if we had ever been to one and when we said that we had not, he asked us to come along and he would explain it to us. The building was divided the long way down the middle into two parts: the front part was the room to undress in and in the back room was a long, shallow pool of hot water. The long wall between the two sections had two open doorways and a man sat between taking tickets. Everyone undressed completely in the first room, women on the left, men on the right. The interpreter took us over to the left door to show us how his wife took her bath. Dozens of nude women squatted in a shallow tile trough which surrounded the pool. Just as we did at our hot tub, they splashed water on their bodies, soaped up, rinsed by splashing again, and then entered the pool to soak. The room was entirely open except for a low curtain which divided the pool, but it did not block their view of each other. We were then invited to participate but we politely declined. We were both fire-engine red with embarrassment. Renninger leaned over and whispered, "Let's get out of here!" and we did.

Six months after I had arrived at Tokyo Bay I had accumulated enough points to go home and orders were cut for me to leave Fukuoka on 19 June, 1946. Little did I know that it would be two months to the day before I would get my "Ruptured Duck"! I was sent back on the same railroad to the 4th Replacement Depot at Zama near Yokohama. The ship that we were to board for our return trip had not yet left the United States so we had time to kill. The train service was great so we would go to neighboring cities like Tokyo. My time in Japan had been exciting and educational. I had met so many interesting people and they were all so friendly. Even though the Japanese people had been our enemy less than a year before, I never met a Japanese person that I didn't like. I was anxious to go home but I knew that I would miss the people I had met and the places where I had been.

One day I was sick all day, vomiting and running a fever. By evening I was very ill. A Captain Harold W. Ames came to see

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