Class Note 1943
Issue
May - Jun 2019
In mid-September 1939 Nobu Mitsui and I enjoyed the sights and sounds of the World’s Fair in New York City. Two days later we were in Hanover.
I took the train up, along with hundreds of other undergraduates, to White River Junction, Vermont, five miles from campus. Nobu had driven up the day before with friends who lived in Connecticut. Waiting to greet me was Larry Durgin ’40, who spotted me instantly when I stepped off the train; I was the only American of Japanese ancestry on the platform!
Larry was such a dear friend and mentor, and he truly looked out for Nobu and me. During Freshman Week he came by every night to 109 Middle Mass. He had earlier bought refurbished furniture for our room: two desks, two chairs, a sofa and easy chair, two rugs, and several lamps. The cost: $102. I paid Larry $51 in cash and Nobu said his father’s company would send a check. We would have been lost without Larry’s help and know-how. Later, when I would see him at Baker Library or on Main Street, he always had time for a short conversation. Larry went on to become a well-known and beloved pastor of an elite church on Riverside Drive in New York City.
I knew Larry because his father, Russell Durgin, headed the YMCA in the Kanda District of Tokyo. I also knew Larry’s siblings, Helen and Russell Jr. ’47, who were several classes behind me at the American School in Japan.
My kids and I had a wonderful dinner with Patty and Rob Lynn ’68 last month. Patty’s dad, Bob Ohama, and I were on the same WW II interrogation team that questioned POWs in the Allied Translators and Interpreters Section just outside of Brisbane, Australia, in 1944. We met Patty and Rob, a retired attorney, for the first time at the Congressional Gold Medal awards ceremony in November 2011 in Washington, D.C.
I write this column on Groundhog Day—and he did not see his shadow, so it will be an early spring! The paper shows the temperatures in Concord, New Hampshire, are a high of 20 and a low of minus 6. The high-low here in Walnut Creek, California, is 57-47. An acute deep freeze has sent temperatures plunging to minus 34 in the Midwest and Eastern regions of the country. Our class spent 40 months (September 1939 to December 1942) in Hanover. Never, to the best of my memory, did we endure this polar vortex of minus degrees.
—George Shimizu, 2642 Saklan Indian Drive, Apt. 2, Walnut Creek, CA 94595
I took the train up, along with hundreds of other undergraduates, to White River Junction, Vermont, five miles from campus. Nobu had driven up the day before with friends who lived in Connecticut. Waiting to greet me was Larry Durgin ’40, who spotted me instantly when I stepped off the train; I was the only American of Japanese ancestry on the platform!
Larry was such a dear friend and mentor, and he truly looked out for Nobu and me. During Freshman Week he came by every night to 109 Middle Mass. He had earlier bought refurbished furniture for our room: two desks, two chairs, a sofa and easy chair, two rugs, and several lamps. The cost: $102. I paid Larry $51 in cash and Nobu said his father’s company would send a check. We would have been lost without Larry’s help and know-how. Later, when I would see him at Baker Library or on Main Street, he always had time for a short conversation. Larry went on to become a well-known and beloved pastor of an elite church on Riverside Drive in New York City.
I knew Larry because his father, Russell Durgin, headed the YMCA in the Kanda District of Tokyo. I also knew Larry’s siblings, Helen and Russell Jr. ’47, who were several classes behind me at the American School in Japan.
My kids and I had a wonderful dinner with Patty and Rob Lynn ’68 last month. Patty’s dad, Bob Ohama, and I were on the same WW II interrogation team that questioned POWs in the Allied Translators and Interpreters Section just outside of Brisbane, Australia, in 1944. We met Patty and Rob, a retired attorney, for the first time at the Congressional Gold Medal awards ceremony in November 2011 in Washington, D.C.
I write this column on Groundhog Day—and he did not see his shadow, so it will be an early spring! The paper shows the temperatures in Concord, New Hampshire, are a high of 20 and a low of minus 6. The high-low here in Walnut Creek, California, is 57-47. An acute deep freeze has sent temperatures plunging to minus 34 in the Midwest and Eastern regions of the country. Our class spent 40 months (September 1939 to December 1942) in Hanover. Never, to the best of my memory, did we endure this polar vortex of minus degrees.
—George Shimizu, 2642 Saklan Indian Drive, Apt. 2, Walnut Creek, CA 94595