We finally entered Tokyo Bay on a slightly hazy late afternoon aboard troopship Hugh J. Galley after more than a week at sea. The haze and sinking early-October sun gave off a slight yellowish-golden hue to the bay, its distant surroundings and to the growing clusters of cargo ships and small craft visible to those of us by the railing as we approached Yokohama. Some of that haze might have had a touch a gray. But what I recall seeing were thin patches of pink haze probably caused by chemical plants or refineries.
Our ship moved slowly due to navigation regulations for what was a truly crowded harbor. Before docking, the sun disappeared behind the city and lights became visible below the darkening, low lying wooden skyline. In an hour or two we would be allowed to go ashore.
So this was Asia in the fall of 1963. Viewing the gradually darkening scene made me uneasy. Had I spent too many hours over the previous 15 or 18 years reading Terry and the Pirates comic strips depicting dangerous adventures in that part of the world? Plus the art-house cinema movies starring Toshiro Mifune and his Samurai sidekicks? Or nearly 20 years of leafing through those large pages of Life magazine filled with black-and-white photos of the fall of China, the Korean War and such?
So yes, I was uneasy because all this was seriously foreign and, like it or not, I was going to become part of it for most of the next year.
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