Peter Leibert's Page

One day after returning from a flight of some sort, some of us crewmembers were putting the flight gear back into our locker when a chief petty officer from the electronics shop came up to me and said “Leibert, the skipper wants you in his office right away.” I had spent three years and a half in the navy and I had never before been requested to talk to “the Skipper”, much less get called into his office. At least in VP6, I would see the skipper up close once a week and by that time had even flown with him and his crew a time or two.

Thoughts in my mind were really racing around as I hurried to the office area. What could this be about? “Leibert reporting, sir. You wanted to see me?” He raised his head, slowly looked me over and then asked. “Why would I be getting a telegram about you from the Red Cross?” I had no idea why and I told him so. “Who do you know in Gifu?” “No one, Sir,” I responded. “What is Gifu?”

I did have a fleeting thought that maybe it was my brother, John. The skipper looked at the telegram for a moment and then said “This wire, from the head of the Red Cross in Gifu, Japan, is requesting that I have you report to Division Headquarters of the 40^th Infantry in Yokohama at 10 a.m. Saturday.” “That must be related to my brother, sir,” I informed him, and so we talked about John for a while.

A few minutes later I left the skippers office with a signed 72-hour liberty pass. I returned to where the guys were still sorting out our gear and excitedly showed them my 72-hour pass. That did not go over very good. During that period of time most crews were flying every day and very few people even got liberty for 24-hours, much less for three whole days. By then, I had only been in the squadron for two months at the most.

Nevertheless, on Saturday morning, I was in my dress blues carrying a bag with my camera and toiletries going out the front gate - with a 72-hour liberty pass. I caught the train toward Yokohama and found that it was crowded to the hilt. I had heard that trains on that route were always overcrowded with standing room only. We stopped at every station and I quickly discovered that I would have to be alert in order to keep from being pushed out the door or into a corner.

About 30 minutes later, we pulled into the main Yokohama train station. The morning nature call was starting to sound off by that time. Where could the restrooms be? Just think about it. You look around and everything is written in Japanese script. The people are all Japanese. I didn’t know any Japanese. As I continued to follow the crowds exiting the train area, I spotted a sign that might be just what I was looking for and I cautiously followed the men - and women, who were turning into that doorway.

Yes, it was the restroom, but as I entered I had to stop, look, and think for a moment or two. This room I had entered was very large with 75 to 100 people in it. The men would head toward the right side of the room, and the women to the left. The right side turned out to be one very long urinal for the men. The left side was one long urinal for the women. They would face the wall and that was it. Well, you do what you have to do, but it was the first time I had ever used a coed restroom in order to do it.

It was much easier to find the 40^th Division’s Headquarters. The headquarters was a very predominate building not too far from the train station. I went up to the duty desk just before the appointed hour and informed the duty Sergeant that I was there to see Master Sergeant John Leibert. And a minute or so later my brother John was before me. We had a lot of catch up to do, as we had not seen one another for two years or more. I don’t recall all that we did, went to, or talked about, but there are a few things that I do remember.

We went to a beer bar where we drank some Kirin Beer together - my first. This place was full of GI’s. We then went shopping at a place where military personnel could purchase things to send home. I bought two sets of table linens, one for my buddy, Vern Scarborough, and his wife, Betty, back in Hawaii, who had just got married. The second set I mailed to mom. I believe that this is the place where John bought two sets of Japanese hand-painted china, which he also sent home. We looked at some china elsewhere and it could have been that he bought them at that store.

What else did we do? I don’t remember. We did a lot of sightseeing. I purchased a Japanese phrase book so I could ask questions about toilets and other important things. Benjo wa doka des ka? Yes, that means, “where is the toilet” Ohio gozaimus. That is not spelled correctly, but it sounds like the greeting “Good evening, sir,” (or was it good morning, sir). Another thing I remember about Yokohama was that their sewer was a flume with a wooden cover. Whenever the sewage got stuck, a guy with a large barrel mounted on a cart would take the cover off and shovel out the material that was blocking the urine stream.

The Red Cross telegram to my commanding officer turned out to be an easy and cheap way for John to communicate with me. He had just graduated from the Gifu nuclear warfare school down south in the southern part of Honshu, and he was on his way back to his regular duty station up in the far northern part of Honshu. John had earlier been stationed in Yokohama so he knew his way around the region. The telegram method worked, and I don’t think that a letter to me personally would have gotten the job done.

I got back to Atsugi early Monday evening and noted that I was scheduled for a 3 a.m. flight the next morning. Oh, it was good to be home. Nobody asked me a thing about what I did or where I went. It was back to business as usual.

Right outside our barracks door was a scene that was hard to believe. I don’t know how far away the mountain was, but it was there - a clear postcard-type shot of Mt. Fuji - when the weather was good. It was likely about 35 or 40 miles to the west of us. When we first arrived at Atsugi, it was very noticeable, but after a week or two, it became part of the background scene. Most often it was covered with clouds. Mount Fuji-san, as the locals referred to it, was over 12,000 feet tall. It is one of those rare cases where the view is not blocked by other mountains and is almost a perfectly shaped volcano cone. Having just arrived from the territory of Hawaii where the Kilauea volcano was actively doing its thing, we were pleased to hear that Mt. Fuji had not been active for over 250 years.

Speaking of perfectly shaped cones, what do you figure white hats do with their empty beer cans. At Atsugi, I had found the answer. We had a white hat club located right next door to the our barracks. Most evenings after dinner we would migrate over to the white hat and have a few beers. During 1951, a can of beer cost 10 cents - usually the beers were Pasbt or Schlitz.

Some nights it would turn out that we would have a couple rounds of a “few beers”. Early every evening, there would be a cone of empty beer cans start to grow on one of the tables. The tables were about 3 1/2 feet in diameter, and during my 1950 era drinking days I knew how many cans those tables could hold. But today I will have to hazard a guess and my guess would be about 1,200 cans. Whatever the number was, the beer can cone had a lot steeper sides than the volcano cone of Mt. Fuji.

I eventually got a regular weekend off, I think it was in January 1952 just before I was to leave on my return to Hawaii. I used this liberty to go to Tokyo and see it. On the way out the gate of the Atsugi base, each sailor was offered a couple of things, a list of do’s and don’ts, and a pair of condoms. I accepted both items and headed on my way. On the list, there were mostly things that you were not to do.

Key to my plans had been to stay overnight in Tokyo, but the instructions informed me that I must only stay at a military-approved hotel. Well that is nice, but what is a military-approved hotel. That concern turned out to a non-issue since soon I was able to see that there were signs on the front of the approved hotels. I selected the White House Hotel.

My hotel experience turned out to quite interesting. The person that was at the desk spoke English which was a pleasant surprise. This was one of the few local sites where I did not have a language barrier. The rooms were very small, I mean smaller than very small. In fact, I was told that I was to remove my shoes and then shown where to leave them outside the room. The room itself had a sliding “paper” door, which was made of a light-wooden frame covered with translucent white paper. Inside “the room” was a space of about five feet by six feet that was entirely covered by a very fluffy quilt. I think the pillow was a rock.

There were a couple of shared-toilets at the end of the corridor and a very large community bath. A better description for this large bath might be that they had a swimming pool in the middle of the building. It reminded me of the YWCA swimming pool back home. This version appeared somewhat unusual to me, but they did have a His and Her section for the “bath” with a screen down the center of the pool. I never did get to use the condoms, but the other instructions were very useful.

In early February 1952, I got informed by my Chief Petty Officer that I would part of the early detachment being returned to Hawaii. I had been selected because I was due to take an advancement in rate test. So soon a bunch of us were on a plane heading toward Oahu where I was able to take my tests. The AL test had two parts - technical and practical. I had no problem with the technical, but the navy’s definition of practical is “can you send and receive 16 words-per-minute of Morse code”. I could have told them ahead of time that I could not - and I didn’t. In Memphis, I should have selected to be an Aviation Electronics Technician (AT) - no code test.