Dad's Japanese-American Army Buddy Helps Fill In Priceless Blanks of Family History

With today's digital cameras and all, folks like me think nothing of taking a dozen or more shots of one object alone just because we can. I have a camera in the cell phone I carry. In Dad's day ordinary people had to be more frugal with the quantity of pictures they took and might merely laugh at the idea soneday their kids and grandkids would have carry-along phones with cameras they answered a full twenty-four seven.

Above:; (from left to right) Frank (Baby Frank) Aoyama, and a "Lieutenant Johnson" photographed in Adak, Alaska about November 1945. Photo collection of Mizu Sugimura.

My family will long be the happy beneficiary of the fact one of my father's Army buddies, a nice man by the name of Ray Narimatsu took and developed the candid of Dad shown here. Then, a few years after my father's death in 1995 at age 67, I started corresponding with Ray to learn more about this period in my Dad's life. Ray was kind and generous to share the candid of my late father and several other snapshots shortly after. It's a gift I'll never forget!

Above: A youthful Frank S. Aoyama. Photo collection of Mizu Sugimura.

Ray told me that Dad was considered youthful looking even for a Japanese-American man. In fact, in his group of friends he was known as "Baby Frank." The headshot that runs just above this paragraph is a good example. At the time the men were deployed Narimatsu related, their commanders had no more concerns about a possible U-boat attack. So everyone packed their bags, then boarded a reconverted hospital ship - the George Washington Carver, which was setting sail for Adak Army Base in the frozen north of Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

After a day of sailing, everyone in this small group of Nikkei men got sick except my Dad, who got up the next day and ate breakfast in the mess hall while the others stayed below and were sick. So he stood out a second way. "The other thing about Frank that caught our eye," Narimatsu related "was he was blind as a bat without his glasses, but we had a ping pong table at the bow of the shop and no one could beat him. We used to call him Radar Vision. He really could play."

During this same voyage, an earthquake occurred somewhere in the Pacific and their ship had to pull into the harbor at Seward, Alaska in order to allow the men to disembark and march out of harm's way if the wave should come their way. Fortunately, this did not occur he said. Once in Adak, the small group of men consisting of Narimatsu, Dad, Lou Hirakawa, Hideo Hori, Lewis Iwata and Robert K. Sun were split up.

My father and another man were assigned to the Signal Corps. Ray and several others were put in what he said was the anti-motorized torpedo boat division nearby. Narimatsu recalled that he saw Dad occasionally at the mess hall, when they did K.P. duty together and relaxed at a sports facility called the Tunderarina which included a bowling alley. One of the men, assigned as a company cook, made it possible for them to get together on more than one occasion and enjoy a few bowls of hot steamed white rice - a food when even served alone would whip up almost any Asian-American man's memories of their mother's home cooking.

Above: Ray Narimatsu dries prints in Adak, AK. Photo collection of Mizu Sugimura.

Ray and my dad also shared a mutual interest in photography and learned how to use the developing equipment on base, a skill which my father used with a little bit of imagination about seven years later after joining his parents and several siblings in the Midwest to snag himself a wife. to snag himself a wife. When their deployment in Alaska was over, Dad and his group were shipped to back to Fort Lawton and then to Camp Beal by Marysville, CA.

After returning home, Day and Ray exchanged Christmas cards, a practice which continued for years after they both married and had kids. When Ray's son choose to attend school in Seattle, his parents came up and were tickled to discover after their arrival that Frank's wife would be one of the librarians at the college his son attended.

Narimatsu is an excellent writer and good correspondent. He has been a good friend to me as well! I have had the utmost pleasure exchanging brief correspondence with him for a number of years following the dad's death. I think both Dad and I were lucky to have met him. his lovely wife Grace and their children. They've all been blessings!

(Note: This blog was originally posted on Sunday, November 11, 2007 at a reader generated site at The News Tribune, Tacoma, WA. under the headline "Father's Japanese-American Army Buddy Shares Priceless Pictures."