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The Spangler pulled into Keoshung, Formosa (currently Tiawan) on May 14, 1957, in to what looked like one gigantic fuel depot. We were there only for the one day, or should I say night, so had to be back aboard at midnight to get underway the following morning. The upcoming days would be busy: the plan called for moving north along the coast of China to Sasebo (a U.S. Navy sea port on the southern tip of Kyushu, Japan) stay there a few days, then head on further north through the Tsushima Strait (separating Japan from South Korea), then through the Kanmon Straits (a narrow body of water separating the islands of Kyushu and Honshu. And that was just the beginning! Once through the Kanmon Straits we would move into the Inland Sea of Japan and on our way to Kobe, Japan for a week or relaxation, then a stopover at Beppu on the Kyushu Island, back through the Kanmon Straits on our way to Chin Hae, South Korea, then back through the Kanmon Straits, and finally on our way to Yokosuka and the final leg home. We couldn't wait! The Far East was exotic, and all that, but heading home was at the top of our list!
What I recall most about Keoshung was how beautiful the women were! Joe Mitchell and I and I believe Gene Lund ( I know there were three of us) were facinated! Every bar was the same, no ugly girls in sight! Why they were different from Japan or China, I haven't the slightest idea, but they appeared taller and with a lighter complexion. Or maybe it was just the early affects of a few beers.
Anyway, when it came time to call it an evening all three of us were still left with a handful of money, not much in American bucks but a lot in Formosan currency. We decided to take a buggy ride down the strip, check out the bars and see if we could find just one ugly girl. The plan was to give her every bit of money we had in our pockets...Of course, we wouldn't tell her why! We just wanted to have some fun and make some girl happy! Hey, we were happy, maybe a little too happy by that time of the evening, so why not share! The thinking was it didn't make any sense to return to the ship with money we couldn't use once we left Formosa.
We took turns running in, looking around, returning to the buggy and exclaiming "Nope, no ugly girls there!" We hit every bar on the strip! Seriously! And no luck! Finally we were running out of bars so at the very last one, we decided to pool our money and just go ahead and give it to the first girl we came across. So, on agreement from my two buddies, I jumped out with the money in hand and handed it to the first girl that met me at the door, then ran back out laughing. You can imagine the surprised look on her face! Most likely, she thought we were some kind nuts! And she was right, a few weeks later these crazy guys discovered the same money could have been converted into Korean currency when we reached Chin Hea.
This was just three guys on liberty that night, so you need to multiply it by the remainder of the crew to get a decent perspective of our stop over in Keoshung. A good example is Ron Knight getting drunk and falling in a binji ditch. Yeah, a bingi ditch! Can you imagine how awful that had to smell? Yuk! According to Ron, he was riding an oxen loaded down with sticks of wood, fell off and ended up in the stink ditch. Poor guy had to be hosed down before being allowed back aboard ship.
I need to point out, in all fairness, that a lot of the married guys and quite a few of my shipmates didn't participate in this kind of wacky fun and, instead, spent their time shopping and sightseeing. I relish my days in the Far East, and wouldn't trade them for anything, but in looking back on it all I wished I had taken the opportunity to see more of the country. Our stopover in Kobe, Japan provided us that opportunity is a good example. More on that a little further on in the writeup here.
We arrived in Sasebo on the 18th and remained there, either in port or operating nearby in the Inland Sea doing exercises with the Japanese Navy, until the 31st of May when got underway for Kobe.
Sasebo was as wild and rowdy as any liberty port on our cruise. Some of the guys preferred it to Yokosuka, as good liberty ports go. The two were very similar what will all the bars, nightclubs, girls and pleasure palaces. I vividly recall one of those houses of pleasure, but best leave that one for a different audience.
The USS Phoebe MSC-199 made Sasebo it's home port and was kind enough to let us use the photo above. They have some wonderful photos of the city on their website well worth visiting. Just click here. But...be sure to use your browsers return button to return back to this page...wouldn't want to lose you!
In the letter to my girlfriend on May 27th I wrote that the Spangler had set a record for steaming more miles than any other Destroyer Escort in the world during peace time...And I added, "frankly I'm not too proud of that though, cause I'd like to spend a little more time in port...and one good reason is because I have four rolls of film to develop. But we just never seem to have enough time in one port to put them in a shop and get them out again."
“In my letter to her on the 30th I mentioned that "After we leave here, which is tomorrow afternoon, we go to Kobe Japan, then maybe to a port in Korea...Last week when we were here in Sasebo, I bought myself a Japanesee picture album, and if mother doesn't quit sending me pictures of the baby (my new little brother), I'll just about be able to fill it up with nothing but baby pictures...I have the duty tonight again, so guess I'll go see the movie "White Feather" starring Richard Wagner and Debra Paget." I closed with a p.s. "Check and see if the Sun doesn't set at 7:06 p.m. the 6th of June. OK?"
One of my duties as a Quartermaster, when I had duty that is, was to use a Nautical Almanac to determine sunrise and sunset. This was our official way of know when to raise and lower the flags. You had to have the latitude and longitude of the ship and from that it was pretty easy to determine the sunrise and sunset. So while I was at the task I pulled out a map of the states and found out what the latitude and longitude was for Omaha.
Ron Knight, in addition to the one he told above, has lots of good stories to tell and told of the evening in Sasebo, when he got drunk to the point that a couple of shore patrol decided he should return to the ship. As they were putting him into the launch, he said he jumped into the water and pulled them in with him. "They were pissed and would have killed me if this Chief had not came along pulled them off." He told them to let me return to the ship. Man they were pissed! "I was damn lucky they didn't return with me else the O.D. would written me up when we came aboard!"
Three new men came aboard during our stopover in Sasebo: William Ray Lisby, ICFA, Leland Adrian Anderson, RMS and George K. Haddow, PNA3.
CDR J. R, Blackburn and staff, COMDES-3, had come aboard on 11 May just prior to leaving Hong Kong and remained aboard until we stopped at Midway Island on our return to the states. So naturally that meant the ship had to show off and go through a big administrative inspection on the 22nd and 23rd. Lots of fun, spit and polish!
Our stop in Kobe, Japan, from June 2nd to June 6th, ranked alongside Auckland, New Zealand as great places to visit, not because it was a wild liberty port, which it wasn't, but because it provided cultural value for a change. After Yokosuka, Subic Bay, Hong Kong and Sasebo, some of us were desperately in need of a little cultural enhancement. Kobe was almost totally destroyed from bombing during the war and had rebuilt considerably. So what we saw was a beautiful, up and coming new city. It's the home of the Ikuta Jinja Shrine, one of the oldest shrines in Japan. And it was close enough to Osaka and Kyoto so that those of the crew who wanted to make a short day's visit in those directions were able to get the task done.
Unfortunately, I had come down with the flu on the way to Kobe so was confined to bed for a few days before arriving. Doc insisted I remain in bed, prohibiting me from doing anything other than rest. He said the flu would weaken my eyes enough as it is, so not to be writing.... Since his office was directly across the compartment from my bunk, he kept a close eye on me. But I'm here to tell you that when he was away or I caught him not looking, I took advantage of his inattention and did pretty much what I wanted, like read a book, write a letter, or do as I'm always doing "thinking of my girlfriend, Pat!
I wrote in my letter to her, when I was able to sneak something together, that "if he thinks I'm going to be in this bed all day without doing anything, then he must be crazy or something ..."Tomorrow we'll be in Kobe, Japan. We're supposed to be here June 2nd through the 5th. I doubt if I will going on liberty even if I am able to get out of this bed tomorrow...For some reason, I've just about had all of this over seas liberty that I care to have. What I want to do now is get home and see a very pretty girl friend of mine! I don't think I'm supposed to be smoking either, but I'm doing it just the same. If I keep this up I expect the #@&%? will have me taking five pills every four hours."
My thoughts on not going ashore lasted only until the first liberty call. The doc cleared me to get up and about and the sight of the city from the ship was more than I could pass up!
 The ship put out notice, shortly after arriving, of a sponsored tour of Kobe and surrounding communities on June 5th, including Osake and Kyoto. I jumped at the opportunity. As I recall, most of the officers and chiefs were along, including a full bus load of us white hats.
Joe Mitchell either come down with the flu or had duty so was unable to make the tour. But he, Gene Lund and I made up for it that evening by putting in for liberty to see Kobe "before it gets dark," or so it was quoted in the Spangler Bulldog News.
Time has erased much of my memory of that outing, but Ido recall the three of us visited the zoo and took lots of pictures. Yeah! I know! Had there been any bars and nightclubs in Kobe, to speak of, you would never have found Gene, Mitch and I in the zoo. That would have been our last place to visit! Unfortunately, I accidentally exposed my roll of film on returning to the ship and wound up with a single photo, that of a bear ( I sent it to my girlfriend, now my wife, as proof that we actually visited a zoo. She still has the picture in her photo album).
The bus tour was a resounding success, a far cry from the way I usually spent my liberties (carousing bars and nightclubs). To say I thoroughly enjoyed the outing, would be an understatement, especially our visit to the Takarazuka Review, considered by many to be Japan ’s premier musical theater company.
As I recall (and I could really use some memory help from my '57 crewmates here), the tour included two major stops: one was to the Ikuta Shinto Shrine in Kobe and the second one was to the Takarazuka Opera House in Takarazuka City. About all I can recall with any certainty from the Ikuta Shinto Shrine was a glass vault containing a long rope made from virgin's hair. I remember trying to imagine how many virgins it took to put together a rope nearly two inches thick and several hundred feet long.
The '57 Cruise Book described Takarazuka as "a quite little town, 40-minutes by train from downtown Kobe and is known throughout Japan for it's world famous Opera House." It added that "The Takarazuka Revue is made up entirely of a female cast called TSUKO GUMI (Moon Troupe). Many of us saw the troupe perform in two plays, one titled 'Fuma Yujo' in 5 scenes... and 'Tales of Manhattan' in 20 scenes. For the theater goer this is a "once in a lifetime experience."
Some photos were taken during the show for display in the Cruise Book. And those are show below. Phil said they were taken by someone else and not him. Umn! Wonder what he was doing! Over the years he also saved the brochure from the Opera House and recently made it available for publication on the website in the Memorabilia section. The cover is displayed at the right. Click on it to review the full brochure.
The Opera House, we discovered, was as plush as any you would find in the states (with one minor exception I'll get to in a moment) and the talent every bit as professional. I might add that the girls were every bit as beautiful too, all several hundred of them! All of the girls are graduates of the Takarazuka Music School, founded in 1913 as a way to attract young girls from good families to the local theater group and train them to perform on stage.
Phil Eng writes about that "one minor exception" by saying, "After the show was over every one of us had to pee like a race horse. There was one public rest room in the town, and it was uni-sex. Do you recall this? Well, the thing is my buddy (a very close shipmate that I'll refer to as 'buddy' here to avoid possible embarrassment for him) was the only virgin I knew of on the whole ship. I asked some local person, "binjo-do-ko-deska?" That means "where is the crapper" in Japanesee. When my buddy and I walked into that building, and he saw all those women sitting on the pots, and all those guys peeing in the trough along the wall, he didn't quite know what to do. I had no problem with that, and it seemed that didn't bother anyone else. Except, my buddy, I thought he was going to dig a hole in the wall behind the rough trying to hide his manhood. I happen to know that he's a married man, with kids and grandkids today, so I guess he got over all that."
Naturally as soon as we returned to the ship I had to write my girlfriend all about the day's events. I also added, as a closing note, that: "Joe had just came in and I talked him into holding Colors (Navy ceremony for executing the Ensign). He said he would... but what he didn’t know at the time was that it was raining outside...I bet he does now. Anyway, I sure hope he's having fun!" I added that our next destination is Korea. "I sure don't care anything about going there!"
Korea turned out to be a lot of fun! Chin Hae was a small Seabee station, with likely not more than 50 sailors stationed there. The fascinating part was that each group of four guys had a Quonset hut, fully equipped with a stove, a refrigerator and a bar. But more important, each guy had a double-decker bunk, one for his live-in girlfriend and one for himself when he felt the need for a separate bed. Naturally each double-decker had privacy curtains.
These guys had a tough life! Yeah, sure! They invited us in, shared a drink or two with us and told us about the rough life they were living...naturally with tongue in cheek.
On the way back to the ship, Joe and I came across a number of grass huts. These were just little small things, about 10-feet in diameter and covered with a grass roof. In each hut was a girl, or should I say a prostitute, to be little more precise.
Evidently for those girls in the neighborhood not fortunate enough to get a boyfriend on the seabee base, they used the huts as their place of business for sailors off visiting ships.
Joe come up with the bright idea of testing their bargaining skills He would never admit it today, but "it was" his idea! We both had a few drinks under our belts, but I don’t think either of us had enough to take on a Korean girl in a grass hut. But he insisted on seeing what they charged.
I went into one hut and he went into another one right to it. The poor little girl in my hut was sure eager for business. And she wasn’t bad looking either, I might add! I told her I had to see what my buddy was going to do first. I could hear Joe bargaining with his girl, from a few dollars down to a dollar, then to seventy five cents, then to a half-dollar and finally down to a quarter. At that point he told her that a quarter was still too much. The poor girl!
So I told mine "My buddy no stay, so no can do! I’m sorry! " She looked so hurt! And I felt guilty! So I handed her some money, don't recall how much, and watched her smile as I stepped outside and caught up with Joe.
That Joe can be cruel! Nah! Just kidding, I’m sure he gave the girl a little money too, but "Gee Whiz!"
When Andy Anderson, our ship's laundry attendant, was asked what he thought about our trip to Keoshung, Sasebo, Chin Hae and Yokosuka, he said "Hot women! And hot saki!" Then added that the saki reminded him of Old Spice aftershave, because of the shape of the small bottles it came in, a lot like the Old Spice bottles his grandfather used when Andy was a kid.
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