![]() ![]() The person who actually wrote the reply was an office clerk, a charming young lady with particularly beautiful eyes. The gentleman who told his staff to give me that kind reply was Shuzo Arita in charge of general affairs at the division. Line's Technical Division room a few days later. I hardly have to tell you that I opened the door to O.S.K. Coming with the report was an invitation to drop in at O.S.K. There also was a thick special album with slots for postcards. I felt as if my picture postcards lost in air raids had revived. Of course, the postcards were no longer of any business use, because the objects of the pictures were all gone. It was accompanied with a plenty of picture postcards depicting my favorite passenger ships. ![]() Almost every company's letter saddened me, reporting the loss of all the ships I had known, leaving only low-grade 2A and 2E wartime standard cargoships barely surviving the war Every shipping line gave me a kind reply. Then I wrote letters to every shipping company, which had owned large fleets before the war, asking which of their ships were lost during and which survived the Pacific War.Īs all the Japanese merchant ships were controlled by the Occupation Forces then, perhaps shipping businessmen might have little work to do, or they were surprised at a boy so enthusiastic about ships, probably a rare interest at the time. But I could find few reports on merchant ships. It was about the time that war story books came into circulation, and they told me the previously unknown fact that the warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy were sunk in one battle or another, leaving only a handful surviving the war, including the battleship Nagato. ![]() They had been built in 1897.Īs I saw real ships one after another, the ships which I had known only through photos and articles in magazines or on picture postcards, I seem to have become irreversibly ship-happy. I met for the first time with the old passenger ships Oigawa Maru and Tonegawa Maru with slim and tall funnels, O.S.K. The Kogane Maru, the queen of the Seto Inland Sea plying on the Beppu route, Nishiki Maru and Sumire Maru - they were all safe and sound. I went to Tempozan almost every week, revisited ships which were dear to me, and met with ships which I had never known. My interest in ships was rekindled by my reunion with the Sansui Maru at the Tempozan Pier (Osaka Port). ![]()
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