Description
219 Navy #3247 (Mil. Govt) FPO San Francisco Friday 11 May 7:45 am Darling, We had our party last night; it was really lots of fun. It began about 7, when we walked into the Japanese teachers’ office (more room than in ours) to find that Morimoto had decorated the tables as though for a luau - banana leaves and 7 or 8 varieties of fruit: papaya, tiny watermelons, sour gum, mango and others I don't know the names of. We had a photograph with Hawaiian and ordinary dance or vocal records, and two of the boys brought instruments (guitar and ukulele); so for the most part we sang, the more fluently as we consumed more beer. Wong turns out to be a natural at singing and interpreting such songs as we are familiar with via the Hawaiian Room of the Lexington, etc., and a number of others. Riley Ewing, present as a temporary member of Education and Welfare (that's a separate story I'll tell you about sometime) was quite in his element; he knows many of the songs himself. There was one Hawaiian song of the type that has infinite possibilities for making up verses, and is further complicated and made amusing by having a sprinkling of both Hawaiian and Japanese phrases which recur throughout in chorus or catchline. The boys had some verses about the Taisa (colonel) and his papaya, another story (or just a fact) that I'll elaborate on some other time, preferable orally. When we left about 9:45 (having consumed 12 cans of beer and 24 cokes amongst 17 or 18 of us) we carefully tidied up the place, all except for leaving a pyramid of beer cans on the center [pg 2] table of the room, as a monument to American democracy. (That's an amusing little game, by the way, and one I’d witnessed at another departmental party for officers and men - the pyramid is built as cans are emptied, and every time someone knocks it down he gets a boot in the rear from the one who had placed the last can previous. The fun, of course, is not in the boot (which is hardly more than a token one) but in the suspense and embarrassment. Tel got it twice but I escaped.) This morning Tel is meeting the Japanese teachers (or did at 7:30) for a sobering little talk based on the Time magazine account of what was found in the concentration camps of Germany. He just felt that it was about time they were told a little of how we feel, whether they choose to believe the stories or not. I should like to be there but my presence might make it more difficult for him - my real reason for not going, however, is that it's more important to me to write you this letter. I shall be interested in hearing how they took it. To work now. I love you, darling Warren
